LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 

Chap._ Copyright W 

ShelL__A_l. . a . 
1 \fr°\ I 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Uiter^i&e €tiition 



THE 

COMPLETE WORKS OF NATHANIEL 

HAWTHORNE, WITH INTRODUCTORY 

NOTES BY GEORGE PARSONS 

LATHROP 

AND ILLUSTRATED WITH 

Etchings by Blum, Church, Dielman, Gifford, Shirlaw> 
and Turner 

IN THIRTEEN VOLUMES 
VOLUME VII. 



9 



, 



' 




OUR OLD HOME, AND ENGLISH 
NOTE-BOOKS 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
« y 



VOL. I. 



if 







5 1891 



BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

€I)e fttbertfttJ* pro&J, Camfcrtfcfle 

1891 






Copyright, 1863, 
By NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 

Copyright, 1870, 
BY SOPHIA HAWTHORNE. 

Copyright, 1883, 
By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

Copyright, 1891, 
By ROSE HAWTHORNE LATHROP. 

All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 



CONTENTS. 

♦— 

OUR OLD HOME. 

PAGE 

Introductory Note 9 

Dedication 13 

To a Friend 15 

Consular Experiences 19 

Leamington Spa . 58 

About Warwick 85 

Recollections op a Gifted Woman . . . . 113 

Lichfield and Uttoxeter 148 

Pilgrimage to Old Boston 169 

Near Oxford 201 

Some of the Haunts of Burns ..... 231 

A London Suburb 254 

Up the Thames 288 

Outside Glimpses of English Poverty .... 326 

} Civic Banquets 363 

PASSAGES FROM THE ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS OF 

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 405 



!. 



OUR OLD HOME: 

A SERIES OF ENGUSH SKETCHE& 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 



OUR OLD HOME. 

The years which Hawthorne passed in England were 
outwardly the most successful, in worldly prosperity 
the most abundant, and in other respects among the 
happiest of his life ; forming in the autumn of his ca- 
reer a sort of counterpoise to the idyllic period spent 
at the Old Manse. Of these years, — from the spring 
of 1853 to June of 1860, excepting a part of 1858 
and 1859, which interval was chiefly spent in Italy, — 
" Our Old Home " was the literary outcome. Much 
of the material composing the sketches in this volume 
occurs in embryonic form in the "English Note- 
Books," which were then still veiled from publicity ; 
but various elements and touches of fancy were sup- 
plied by the author's mood or memory at the instant of 
writing. His impressions of England, outlined in the 
" Note-Books " and scattered at random through many 
pages, here assume a connected and artistic shape. 

The articles embraced in " Our Old Home " were 
begun at The Wayside, Concord, in 1862, and were 
first published in the " Atlantic Monthly," which was 
then edited by Mr. James T. Fields. Mr. Fields has 
placed on record, in his " Yesterdays with Authors," 
the fullest memoranda now to be had relative to the 
production of these sketches. Hawthorne, in speaking 



10 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

of them, said to him : " We must remember that 
there is a good deal of intellectual ice mingled with 
this wine of memory.' ' Indeed, he took a discouraged 
tone regarding the work, and wrote, on forwarding 
one of the manuscripts : " I hope you will like it, 
for the subject seemed interesting to me when I was 
on the spot, but I always feel a singular despondency 
and heaviness of heart in reopening these old journals 
now." At another time : " Heaven sees fit to visit 
me with an unshakable conviction that all this series 
of articles is good for nothing ; but that is none of my 
business, provided the public and you are of a differ- 
ent opinion." It is probable that this down-hearted 
mood was a part of the general depression which 
weighed heavily upon Hawthorne from the beginning 
of the civil war until his death, and was caused by the 
unhappy state of the country. He looked back, also, 
to his English sojourn as a pleasant experience never 
likely to be repeated, and often longed to return to 
the mother-country, which had entertained him so hos- 
pitably and where he had made warm friends. 

Some of these friends were startled, and perhaps a 
little hurt, by the frankness of the characterizations 
and criticisms which the book bestowed on the Eng- 
lish. Hawthorne, however, remarks in a letter to Mr. 
Fields : " I really think Americans have more cause 
than they to complain of me. Looking over the vol- 
ume, I am rather surprised to find that whenever I 
draw a comparison between the two peoples, I almost 
invariably cast the balance against ourselves." And 
it was from Americans, in fact, that Hawthorne re- 
ceived the severest censure on the publication of " Our 
Old Home," though for quite another cause than his 
remarks on their national character. He had dedi- 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 11 

cated the book to his old college-friend, Ex-President 
Franklin Pierce, against whom popular opinion at the 
North was then very bitter, on account of the attitude 
of compromise taken by him towards the South while 
he was Chief Magistrate of the Union, and his opposi- 
tion to the war and to emancipation. When remon- 
strated with on his purpose of linking the volume 
with Pierce's name, Hawthorne replied to Mr. Fields: 
" I find that it would be a piece of poltroonery in me 
to withdraw either the dedication or the dedicatory 
letter. My long and intimate relations with Pierce 
render the dedication altogether proper, especially as 
regards this book, which would have had no existence 
without his kindness ; and if he is so exceedingly un- 
popular that his name is enough to sink the volume, 
there is so much the more need that an old friend 
should stand by him. I cannot, merely on account of 
pecuniary profit or literary reputation, go back from 
what I have deliberately thought and felt it right to 
do ; and if I were to tear out the dedication, I should 
never look at the volume again without remorse and 
shame." The collection was accordingly published, 
in the autumn of 1863, with the dedicatory note as it 
now stands. As a literary performance "Our Old 
Home " was received cordially, but the political and 
personal indignation roused by the dedication was 
deep. " My friends have dropped off from me like 
autumn leaves," Hawthorne wrote to his old comrade, 
Bridge, who, although in the ranks of the political 
party opposed to Hawthorne's views, remained loyal 
to him. 

Of the story told about an erring doctor of divinity, 
in the "Consular Experiences," the author wrote to 
Mr. Fields : "It is every bit true (like the other an- 



12 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

ecdotes^, only not told so darkly as it might have 
been for the reverend gentleman." Among some cor- 
respondence the editor, a few years since, came upon 
a letter addressed to Hawthorne respecting this very 
point. The writer, who was a stranger, explained 
that he had had a controversy with some friends, who 
insisted that the circumstances narrated must have 
been invented by the author for effect. On the en- 
velope Hawthorne made a memorandum to the effect 
that the letter had been answered by an assurance that 
the incident was an actual one. That this answer was 
received and the question settled the editor recently 
learned from the correspondent himself, who, curiously 
enough, had removed from Illinois, where his letter 
was written, and was occupying a house next to the 
Wayside, where the " Consular Experiences " was 
penned. 

G. P. L. 



TO 
FRANKLIN PIERCE, 

AS A SLIGHT MEMORIAL OF A COLLEGE FRIENDSHIP, PROLONGED 

THROUGH MANHOOD, AND RETAINING ALL ITS VITALITY 

IN OUR AUTUMNAL YEARS, 

Ww Volume 

IS INSCRIBED BY 

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 



TO A FRIEND. 



I have not asked your consent, my dear General, 
to the foregoing inscription, because it would have 
been no inconsiderable disappointment to me had you 
withheld it ; for I have long desired to connect your 
name with some book of mine, in commemoration of 
an early friendship that has grown old between two 
individuals of widely dissimilar pursuits and fortunes. 
I only wish that the offering were a worthier one than 
this volume of sketches, which certainly are not of a 
kind likely to prove interesting to a statesman in re- 
tirement, inasmuch as they meddle with no matters 
of policy or government, and have very little to say 
about the deeper traits of national character. In their 
humble way, they belong entirely to aesthetic litera- 
ture, and can achieve no higher success than to repre- 
sent to the American reader a few of the external as- 
pects of English scenery and life, especially those that 
are touched with the antique charm to which our coun- 
trymen are more susceptible than are the people among 
whom it is of native growth. 

I once hoped, indeed, that so slight a volume would 
not be all that I might write. These and other 
sketches, with which in a somewhat rougher form than 
I have given them here, my journal was copiously 
filled, were intended for the side -scenes and back- 
grounds and exterior adornment of a work of fiction 



16 TO A FRIEND. 

of which the plan had imperfectly developed itself in 
my mind, and into which I ambitiously proposed to 
convey more of various modes of truth than I could 
have grasped by a direct effort. Of course, I should 
not mention this abortive project, only that it has 
been utterly thrown aside and will never now be ac- 
complished. The Present, the Immediate, the Actual, 
has proved too potent for me. It takes away not only 
my scanty faculty, but even my desire for imaginative 
composition, and leaves me sadly content to scatter a 
thousand peaceful fantasies upon the hurricane that is 
sweeping us all along with it, possibly, into a Limbo 
where our nation and its polity may be as literally the 
fragments of a shattered dream as my unwritten Ro- 
mance. But I have far better hopes for our dear 
country; and for my individual share of the catas- 
trophe, I afflict myself little, or not at all, and shall 
easily find room for the abortive work on a certain 
ideal shelf, where are reposited many other shadowy 
volumes of mine, more in number, and very much su- 
perior in quality, to those which I have succeeded in 
rendering actual. 

To return to these poor Sketches : some of my 
friends have told me that they evince an asperity of 
sentiment towards the English people which I ought 
not to feel, and which it is highly inexpedient to ex- 
press. The charge surprises me, because, if it be 
true, I have written from a shallower mood than I 
supposed. I seldom came into personal relations with 
an Englishman without beginning to like him, and 
feeling my favorable impression wax stronger with 
the progress of the acquaintance. I never stood in an 
English crowd without being conscious of hereditary 
sympathies. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that an 



TO A FRIEND. 17 

American is continually thrown upon his national an- 
tagonism by some acrid quality in the moral atmos- 
phere of England. These people think so loftily of 
themselves, and so contemptuously of everybody else, 
that it requires more generosity than I possess to keep 
always in perfectly good-humor with them. Jotting 
down the little acrimonies of the moment in my jour- 
nal, and transferring them thence (when they hap- 
pened to be tolerably well expressed) to these pages, 
it is very possible that I may have said things which a 
profound observer of national character would hesitate 
to sanction, though never any, I verily believe, that 
had not more or less of truth. If they be true, there 
is no reason in the world why they should not be said. 
Not an Englishman of them all ever spared America 
for courtesy's sake or kindness ; nor, in my opinion, 
would it contribute in the least to our mutual advan- 
tage and comfort if we were to besmear one another 
all over with butter and honey. At any rate, we 
must not judge of an Englishman's susceptibilities by 
our own, which likewise, I trust, are of a far less sen- 
sitive texture than formerly. 

And now farewell, my dear friend ; and excuse (if 
you think it needs any excuse) the freedom with which 
I thus publicly assert a personal friendship between a 
private individual and a statesman who has filled what 
was then the most august position in the world. But 
I dedicate my book to the Friend, and shall defer a 
colloquy with the Statesman till some calmer and sun- 
nier hour. Only this let me say, that, with the record 
of your life in my memory, and with a sense of your 
character in my deeper consciousness as among the 
few things that time has left as it found them, I need 
no assurance that you continue faithful forever to that 

VOL. VII. 2 



18 TO A FRIEND. 

grand idea of an irrevocable Union, which, as you 
once told me, was the earliest that your brave father 
taught you. For other men there may be a choice of 
paths, — for you, but one ; and it rests among my cer- 
tainties that no man's loyalty is more steadfast, no 
man's hopes or apprehensions on behalf of our na- 
tional existence more deeply heartfelt, or more closely 
intertwined with his possibilities of personal happi- 
ness, than those of Franklin Pierce. 

The Wayside, July 2, 1863. 



OUR OLD HOME. 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

The Consulate of the United States, in my day, was 
located in Washington Buildings (a shabby and smoke- 
stained edifice of four stories high, thus illustriously 
named in honor of our national establishment), at the 
lower corner of Brunswick Street, contiguous to the 
Goree Arcade, and in the neighborhood of some of the 
oldest docks. This was by no means a polite or ele- 
gant portion of England's great commercial city, nor 
were the apartments of the American official so splen- 
did as to indicate the assumption of much consular 
pomp on his part. A narrow and ill-lighted staircase 
gave access to an equally narrow and ill-lighted pas- 
sageway on the first floor, at the extremity of which, 
surmounting a door-frame, appeared an exceedingly 
stiff pictorial representation of the Goose and Grid- 
iron, according to the English idea of those ever-to-be- 
honored symbols. The staircase and passageway were 
often thronged, of a morning, with a set of beggarly 
and piratical-looking scoundrels (I do no wrong to our 
own countrymen in styling them so, for not one in 
twenty was a genuine American), purporting to be- 
long to our mercantile marine, and chiefly composed 
of Liverpool Black-ballers and the scum of every mari- 
time nation on earth ; such being the seamen by whose 



20 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

assistance we then disputed the navigation of the world 
with England. These specimens of a most unfortu- 
nate class of people were shipwrecked crews in quest 
of bed, board, and clothing ; invalids asking permits 
for the hospital ; bruised and bloody wretches com- 
plaining of ill-treatment by their officers ; drunkards, 
desperadoes, vagabonds, and cheats, perplexingly in- 
termingled with an uncertain proportion of reasona- 
bly honest men. All of them (save here and there a 
poor devil of a kidnapped landsman in his shore-going 
rags) wore red flannel shirts, in which they had swel- 
tered or shivered throughout the voyage, and all re- 
quired consular assistance in one form or another. 

Any respectable visitor, if he could make up his 
mind to elbow a passage among these sea-monsters, 
Was admitted into an outer office, where he found more 
of the same species, explaining their respective wants 
or grievances to the Vice-Consul and clerks, while 
their shipmates awaited their turn outside the door. 
Passing through this exterior court, the stranger was 
ushered into an inner privacy, where sat the Consul 
himself, ready to give personal attention to such pecul- 
iarly difficult and more important cases as might de- 
mand the exercise of (what we will courteously sup- 
pose to be) his own higher judicial or administrative 
sagacity. 

It was an apartment of very moderate size, painted 
in imitation of oak, and duskily lighted by two win- 
dows looking across a by-street at the rough brick- 
side of an immense cotton warehouse, a plainer and 
uglier structure than ever was built in America. On 
the walls of the room hung a large map of the United 
States (as they were, twenty years ago, but seem little 
likely to be, twenty years hence), and a similar one of 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 21 

Great Britain, with its territory so provokingly com- 
pact, that we may expect it to sink sooner than sunder. 
Farther adornments were some rude engravings of our 
naval victories in the War of 1812, together with the 
Tennessee State House, and a Hudson River steamer, 
and a colored, life-size lithograph of General Taylor, 
with an honest hideousness of aspect, occupying the 
place of honor above the mantel-piece. On the top of 
a bookcase stood a fierce and terrible bust of General 
Jackson, pilloried in a military collar which rose above 
his ears, and frowning forth immitigably at any Eng- 
lishman who might happen to cross the threshold. I 
am afraid, however, that the truculence of the old 
General's expression was utterly thrown away on this 
stolid and obdurate race of men ; for, when they occa- 
sionally inquired whom this work of art represented, I 
was mortified to find that the younger ones had never 
heard of the battle of New Orleans, and that their 
elders had either forgotten it altogether, or contrived 
to misremember, and twist it wrong end foremost into 
something like an English victory. They have caught 
from the old Romans (whom they resemble in so many 
other characteristics) this excellent method of keeping 
the national glory intact by sweeping all defeats and 
humiliations clean out of their memory. Nevertheless, 
my patriotism forbade me to take down either the bust 
or the pictures, both because it seemed no more than 
right that an American Consulate (being a little patch 
of our nationality imbedded into the soil and institu- 
tions of England) should fairly represent the Ameri- 
can taste in the fine arts, and because these decora- 
tions reminded me so delightfully of an old-fashioned 
American barber's shop. 

One truly English object was a barometer hanging 



22 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

on the wall, generally indicating one or another degree 
of disagreeable weather, and so seldom pointing to 
Fair, that I began to consider that portion of its circle 
as made superfluously. The deep chimney, with its 
grate of bituminous coal, was English too, as was also 
the chill temperature that sometimes called for a fire 
at midsummer, and the foggy or smoky atmosphere 
which often, between November and March, compelled 
me to set the gas aflame at noonday. I am not aware 
of omitting anything important in the above descrip- 
tive inventory, unless it be some book-shelves filled 
with octavo volumes of the American Statutes, and a 
good many pigeon-holes stuffed with dusty communi- 
cations from former Secretaries of State, and other 
official documents of similar value, constituting part 
of the archives of the Consulate, which I might have 
done my successor a favor by flinging into the coal- 
grate. Yes ; there was one other article demanding 
prominent notice : the consular copy of the New Tes- 
tament, bound in black morocco, and greasy, I fear, 
with a daily succession of perjured kisses ; at least, I 
can hardly hope that all the ten thousand oaths, ad- 
ministered by me between two breaths, to all sorts of 
people and on all manner of worldly business, were 
reckoned by the swearer as if taken at his soul's peril. 
Such, in short, was the dusky and stifled chamber 
in which I spent wearily a considerable portion of 
more than four good years of my existence. At first, 
to be quite frank with the reader, I looked upon it 
as not altogether fit to be tenanted by the commercial 
representative of so great and prosperous a country as 
the United States then were ; and I should speedily 
have transferred my headquarters to airier and loftier 
apartments, except for the prudent consideration that 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 23 

my government would have left me thus to support its 
dignity at my own personal expense. Besides, a long 
line of distinguished predecessors, of whom the latest 
is now a gallant general under the Union banner, had 
found the locality good enough for them ; it might 
certainly be tolerated, therefore, by an individual so 
little ambitious of external magnificence as myself. So 
I settled quietly down, striking some of my roots into 
such soil as I could find, adapting myself to circum- 
stances, and with so much success, that, though from 
first to last I hated the very sight of the little room, I 
should yet have felt a singular kind of reluctance in 
changing it for a better. 

Hither, in the course of my incumbency, came a 
great variety of visitors, principally Americans, but in- 
cluding almost every other nationality on earth, espe- 
cially the distressed and downfallen ones, like those of 
Poland and Hungary. Italian bandits (for so they 
looked), proscribed conspirators from Old Spain, Span- 
ish-Americans, Cubans who professed to have stood by 
Lopez, and narrowly escaped his fate, scarred French 
soldiers of the Second Republic, — in a word, all suf- 
ferers, or pretended ones, in the cause of Liberty, all 
people homeless in the widest sense, those who never 
had a country, or had lost it, those whom their native 
land had impatiently flung off for planning a better 
system of things than they were born to, — a multitude 
of these, and, doubtless, an equal number of jail-birds, 
outwardly of the same feather, sought the American 
Consulate, in hopes of at least a bit of bread, and, per- 
haps, to beg a passage to the blessed shores of Free- 
dom. In most cases there was nothing, and in any 
case distressingly little, to be done for them ; neither 
was I of a proselyting disposition, nor desired to make 



24 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

my Consulate a nucleus for the vagrant discontents 
of other lands. And yet it was a proud thought, a 
forcible appeal to the sympathies of an American, that 
these unfortunates claimed the privileges of citizenship 
in our Republic on the strength of the very same no- 
ble misdemeanors that had rendered them outlaws to 
their native despotisms. So I gave them what small 
help I could. Methinks the true patriots and martyr- 
spirits of the whole world should have been conscious 
of a pang near the heart, when a deadly blow was 
aimed at the vitality of a country which they have felt 
to be their own in the last resort. 

As for my countrymen, I grew better acquainted 
with many of our national characteristics during those 
four years than in all my preceding life. Whether 
brought more strikingly out by the contrast with Eng- 
lish manners, or that my Yankee friends assumed an 
extra peculiarity from a sense of defiant patriotism, so 
it was that their tones, sentiments, and behavior, even 
their figures and cast of countenance, all seemed chis- 
elled in sharper angles than ever I had imagined them 
to be at home. It impressed me with an odd idea of 
having somehow lost the property of my own person, 
when I occasionally heard one of them speaking of me 
as "my Consul" ! They often came to the Consulate 
in parties of half a dozen or more, on no business 
whatever, but merely to subject their public servant to 
a rigid examination, and see how he was getting on 
with his duties. These interviews were rather formid- 
able, being characterized by a certain stiffness which I 
felt to be sufficiently irksome at the moment, though 
it looks laughable enough in the retrospect. It is my 
firm belief that these fellow-citizens, possessing a na- 
tive tendency to organization, generally halted outside 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 25 

of the door, to elect a speaker, chairman, or moderator, 
and thus approached me with all the formalities of a 
deputation from the American people. After saluta- 
tions on both sides, — abrupt, awful, and severe on 
their part, and deprecatory on mine, — and the national 
ceremony of shaking hands being duly gone through 
with, the interview proceeded by a series of calm and 
well-considered questions or remarks from the spokes- 
man (no other of the guests vouchsafing to utter a 
word), and diplomatic responses from the Consul, who 
sometimes found the investigation a little more search- 
ing than he liked. I flatter myself, however, that, by 
much practice, I attained considerable skill in this kind 
of intercourse, the art of which lies in passing off com- 
monplaces for new and valuable truths, and talking 
trash and emptiness in such a way that a pretty acute 
auditor might mistake it for something solid. If there 
be any better method of dealing with such junctures, 
— when talk is to be created out of nothing, and within 
the scope of several minds at once, so that you cannot 
apply yourself to your interlocutor's individuality, — I 
have not learned it. 

Sitting, as it were, in the gateway between the Old 
World and the New, where the steamers and packets 
landed the greater part of our wandering countrymen, 
and received them again when their wanderings were 
done, I saw that no people on earth have such vaga- 
bond habits as ourselves. The Continental races never 
travel at all if they can help it ; nor does an English- 
man ever think of stirring abroad, unless he has the 
money to spare, or proposes to himself some definite 
advantage from the journey ; but it seemed to me that 
nothing was more common than for a young American 
deliberately to spend all his resources in an aesthetic 



26 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

peregrination about Europe, returning with pockets 
nearly empty to begin the world in earnest. It hap- 
pened, indeed, much oftener than was at all agreeable 
to myself, that their funds held out just long enough to 
bring them to the door of my Consulate, where they en- 
tered as if with an undeniable right to its shelter and 
protection, and required at my hands to be sent home 
again. In my first simplicity, — finding them gentle 
manly in manners, passably educated, and only tempted 
a little beyond their means by a laudable desire of im- 
proving and refining themselves, or perhaps for the 
sake of getting better artistic instruction in music, 
painting, or sculpture than our country could supply, 
— I sometimes took charge of them on my private re- 
sponsibility, since our government gives itself no trou- 
ble about its stray children, except the sea-faring class. 
But, after a few such experiments, discovering that 
none of these estimable and ingenuous young men, 
however trustworthy they might appear, ever dreamed 
of reimbursing the Consul, I deemed it expedient to 
take another course with them. Applying myself to 
some friendly shipmaster, I engaged homeward pas- 
sages on their behalf, with the understanding that they 
were to make themselves serviceable on shipboard ; and 
I remember several very pathetic appeals from paint- 
ers and musicians, touching the damage which their 
artistic fingers were likely to incur from handling the 
ropes. But my observation of so many heavier trou- 
bles left me very little tenderness for their finger-ends. 
In time I grew to be reasonably hard-hearted, though 
it never was quite possible to leave a countryman with 
no shelter save an English poorhouse, when, as he in- 
variably averred, he had only to set foot on his native 
soil to be possessed of ample funds. It was my ulti- 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 27 

mate conclusion, however, that American ingenuity 
may be pretty safely left to itself, and that, one way 
or another, a Yankee vagabond is certain to turn up 
at his own threshold, if he has any, without help of a 
Consul, and perhaps be taught a lesson of foresight 
that may profit him hereafter. 

Among these stray Americans, I met with no other 
case so remarkable as that of an old man, who was in 
the habit of visiting me once in a few months, and 
soberly affirmed that he had been wandering about 
England more than a quarter of a century (precisely 
twenty-seven years, I think), and all the while doing 
his utmost to get home again. Herman Melville, in 
his excellent novel or biography of " Israel Potter," 
has an idea somewhat similar to this. The individual 
now in question was a mild and patient, but very 
ragged and pitiable old fellow, shabby beyond descrip- 
tion, lean and hungry-looking, but with a large and 
somewhat red nose. He made no complaint of his 
ill-fortune, but only repeated in a quiet voice, with a 
pathos of which he was himself evidently unconscious, 
" I want to get home to Ninety-Second Street, Phila- 
delphia." He described himself as a printer by trade, 
and said that he had come over when he was a younger 
man, in the hope of bettering himself, and for the sake 
of seeing the Old Country, but had never since been 
rich enough to pay his homeward passage. His man- 
ner and accent did not quite convince me that he 
was an American, and I told him so ; but he stead- 
fastly affirmed, "Sir, I was born and have lived in 
Ninety-Second Street, Philadelphia," and then went 
on to describe some public edifices and other local ob- 
jects with which he used to be familiar, adding, with 
a simplicity that touched me very closely, " Sir, I had 



28 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

rather be there than here ! " Though I still mani- 
fested a lingering doubt, he took no offence, replying 
with the same mild depression as at first, and insist- 
ing again and again on Ninety-Second Street. Up to 
the time when I saw him, he still got a little occa- 
sional job-work at his trade, but subsisted mainly on 
such charity as he met with in his wanderings, shift- 
ing from place to place continually, and asking assist- 
ance to convey him to his native land. Possibly he 
was an impostor, one of the multitudinous shapes of 
English vagabondism, and told his falsehood with such 
powerful simplicity, because, by many repetitions, he 
had convinced himself of its truth. But if, as I be- 
lieve, the tale was fact, how very strange and sad was 
this old man's fate! Homeless on a foreign shore, 
looking always towards his country, coming again and 
again to the point whence so many were setting sail for 
it, — so many who would soon tread in Ninety-Second 
Street, — losing, in this long series of years, some of 
the distinctive characteristics of an American, and at 
last dying and surrendering his clay to be a portion 
of the soil whence he could not escape in his lifetime. 
He appeared to see that he had moved me, but did 
not attempt to press his advantage with any new ar- 
gument, or any varied form of entreaty. He had but 
scanty and scattered thoughts in his gray head, and 
in the intervals of those, like the refrain of an old 
ballad, came in the monotonous burden of his appeal, 
" If I could only find myself in Ninety-Second Street, 
Philadelphia ! " But even his desire of getting home 
had ceased to be an ardent one (if, indeed, it had not 
always partaken of- the dreamy sluggishness of his 
character), although it remained his only locomotive 
impulse, and perhaps the sole principle of life that 
kept his blood from actual torpor. 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 29 

The poor old fellow's story seemed to me almost as 
worthy of being chanted in immortal song as that of 
Odysseus or Evangeline. I took his case into deep 
consideration, but dared not incur the moral responsi- 
bility of sending him across the sea, at his age, after 
so many years of exile, when the very tradition of him 
had passed away, to find his friends dead, or forgetful, 
3r irretrievably vanished, and the whole country be- 
come more truly a foreign land to him than England 
was now, — and even Ninety - Second Street, in the 
weedlike decay and growth of our localities, made 
over anew and grown unrecognizable by his old eyes. 
That street, so patiently longed for, had transferred 
itself to the New Jerusalem, and he must seek it 
there, contenting his slow heart, meanwhile, with the 
smoke-begrimed thoroughfares of English towns, or 
the green country lanes and by-paths with which his 
wanderings had made him familiar ; for doubtless he 
had a beaten track, and was the " long-remembered 
beggar " now, with food and a roughly hospitable 
greeting ready for him at many a farm-house door, 
and his choice of lodging under a score of haystacks. 
In America, nothing awaited him but that worst form 
of disappointment which comes under the guise of a 
long- cherished and late - accomplished purpose, and 
then a year or two of dry and barren sojourn in an 
almshouse, and death among strangers at last, where 
he had imagined a circle of familiar faces. So I con- 
tented myself with giving him alms, which he thank- 
fully accepted, and went away with bent shoulders 
and an aspect of gentle forlornness ; returning upon 
his orbit, however, after a few months, to tell the same 
sad and quiet story of his abode in England for more 
than twenty- seven years, in all which time he had 



30 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

been endeavoring, and still endeavored as patiently as 
ever, to find his way home to Ninety-Second Street, 
Philadelphia. 

I recollect another case, of a more ridiculous order, 
but still with a foolish kind of pathos entangled in it, 
which impresses me now more forcibly than it did at 
the moment. One day, a queer, stupid, good-natured, 
fat - faced individual came into my private room, 
dressed in a sky-blue, cut-away coat and mixed trou- 
sers, both garments worn and shabby, and rather too 
small for his overgrown bulk. After a little prelimi- 
nary talk, he turned out to be a country shopkeeper 
(from Connecticut, I think), who had left a flourish- 
ing business, and come over to England purposely and 
solely to have an interview with the Queen. Some 
years before he had named his two children, one for 
her Majesty and the other for Prince Albert, and had 
transmitted photographs of the little people, as well as 
of his wife and himself, to the illustrious godmother. 
The Queen had gratefully acknowledged the favor in 
a letter under the hand of her private secretary. Now, 
the shopkeeper, like a great many other Americans, 
had long cherished a fantastic notion that he was one 
of the rightful heirs of a rich English estate ; and on 
the strength of her Majesty's letter and the hopes of 
royal patronage which it inspired, he had shut up his 
little country-store and come over to claim his inheri- 
tance. On the voyage, a German fellow-passenger had 
relieved him of his money on pretence of getting it 
favorably exchanged, and had disappeared immedi- 
ately on the ship's arrival ; so that the poor fellow was 
compelled to pawn all his clothes, except the remark 
ably shabby ones in which I beheld him, and in which 
(as he himself hinted, with a melancholy, yet good* 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 31 

natured smile) he did not look altogether fit to see the 
Queen. I agreed with him that the bobtailed coat 
and mixed trousers constituted a very odd - looking 
court-dress, and suggested that it was doubtless his 
present purpose to get back to Connecticut as fast as 
possible. But no ! The resolve to see the Queen was 
as strong in him as ever ; and it was marvellous the 
pertinacity with which he clung to it amid raggedness 
and starvation, and the earnestness of his supplication 
that I would supply him with funds for a suitable ap- 
pearance at Windsor Castle. 

I never had so satisfactory a perception of a com- 
plete booby before in my life ; and it caused me to feel 
kindly towards him, and yet impatient and exasper- 
ated on behalf of common-sense, which could not pos- 
sibly tolerate that such an unimaginable donkey should 
exist. I laid his absurdity before him in the very 
plainest terms, but without either exciting his anger 
or shaking his resolution. " Oh my dear man," quoth 
he, with good-natured, placid, simple, and tearful stub- 
bornness, " if you could but enter into my feelings and 
see the matter from beginning to end as I see it! " To 
confess the truth, I have since felt that I was hard- 
hearted to the poor simpleton, and that there was 
more weight in his remonstrance than I chose to be 
sensible of, at the time ; for, like many men who have 
been in the habit of making playthings or tools of 
their imagination and sensibility, I was too rigidly 
tenacious of what was reasonable in the affairs of real 
life. And even absurdity has its rights, when, as in 
this case, it has absorbed a human being's entire na- 
ture and purposes. I ought to have transmitted him 
to Mr. Buchanan, in London, who, being a good-na- 
tured old gentleman, and anxious, just then, to gratify 



32 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

the universal Yankee nation, might, for the joke's sake, 
have got him admittance to the Queen, who had fairly 
laid herself open to his visit, and has received hun- 
dreds of our countrymen on infinitely slighter grounds. 
But 1 was inexorable, being turned to flint by the in- 
sufferable proximity of a fool, and refused to interfere 
with his business in any way except to procure him a 
passage home. I can see his face of mild, ridiculous 
despair at this moment, and appreciate, better than I 
could then, how awfully cruel he must have felt my 
obduracy to be. For years and years, the idea of an 
interview with Queen Victoria had haunted his poor 
foolish mind ; and now, when he really stood on Eng- 
lish ground, and the palace-door was hanging ajar for 
him, he was expected to turn back, a penniless and 
bamboozled simpleton, merely because an iron-hearted 
Consul refused to lend him thirty shillings (so low had 
his demand ultimately sunk) to buy a second-class 
ticket on the rail for London ! 

He visited the Consulate several times afterwards, 
subsisting on a pittance that I allowed him in the hope 
of gradually starving him back to Connecticut, assail- 
ing me with the old petition at every opportunity, look- 
ing shabbier at every visit, but still thoroughly good- 
tempered, mildly stubborn, and smiling through his 
tears, not without a perception of the ludicrousness of 
his own position. Finally, he disappeared altogether, 
and whither he had wandered, and whether he ever 
saw the Queen, or wasted quite away in the endeavor, 
I never knew ; but I remember unfolding the " Times," 
about that period, with a daily dread of reading an ac- 
count of a ragged Yankee's attempt to steal into Buck- 
ingham Palace, and how he smiled tearfully at his 
captors, and besought them to introduce him to her 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 33 

Majesty. I submit to Mr. Secretary Seward that lie 
ought to make diplomatic remonstrances to the Brit- 
ish Ministry, and require them to take such order that 
the Queen shall not any longer bewilder the wits of 
our poor compatriots by responding to their epistles 
and thanking them for their photographs. 

One circumstance in the foregoing incident — I 
mean the unhappy storekeeper's notion of establish- 
ing his claim to an English estate — was common to 
a great many other applications, personal or by letter, 
with which I was favored by my countrymen. The 
cause of this peculiar insanity lies deep in the Anglo- 
American heart. After all these bloody wars and 
vindictive animosities, we have still an unspeakable 
yearning towards England. When our forefathers 
left the old home, they pulled up many of their roots, 
but trailed along with them others, which were never 
snapt asunder by the tug of such a lengthening dis- 
tance, nor have been torn out of the original soil by 
the violence of subsequent struggles, nor severed by 
the edge of the sword. Even so late as these days, 
they remain entangled with our heart-strings, and 
might often have influenced our national cause like 
the tiller-ropes of a ship, if the rough gripe of Eng- 
land had been capable of managing so sensitive a kind 
of machinery. It has required nothing less than the 
boorishness, the stolidity, the self-sufficiency, the con- 
temptuous jealousy, the half-sagacity, invariably blind 
of one eye and often distorted of the other, that char- 
acterize this strange people, to compel us to be a great 
nation in our own right, instead of continuing vir- 
tually, if not in name, a province of their small island. 
What pains did they take to shake us off, and have 
ever since taken to keep us wide apart from them ! 



34 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

It might seem their folly, but was really their fate, or, 
rather, the Providence of God, who has doubtless a 
work for us to do, in which the massive materiality of 
the English character would have been too ponderous 
a dead -weight upon our progress. And, besides, if 
England had been wise enough to twine our new vigor 
round about her ancient strength, her power would 
have been too firmly established ever to yield, in its 
due season, to the otherwise immutable law of im- 
perial vicissitude. The earth might then have beheld 
the intolerable spectacle of a sovereignty and institu- 
tions, imperfect, but indestructible. 

Nationally, there has ceased to be any peril of so 
inauspicious and yet outwardly attractive an amalga- 
mation. But as an individual, the American is often 
conscious of the deep-rooted sympathies that belong 
more fitly to times gone by, and feels a blind pathetic 
tendency to wander back again, which makes itself 
evident in such wild dreams as I have alluded to 
above, about English inheritances. A mere coinci- 
dence of names (the Yankee one, perhaps, having 
been assumed by legislative permission), a suppositi- 
tious pedigree, a silver mug on which an anciently en- 
graved coat of arms has been half scrubbed out, a seal 
with an uncertain crest, an old yellow letter or docu- 
ment in faded ink, the more scantily legible the bet- 
ter, — rubbish of this kind, found in a neglected 
drawer, has been potent enough to turn the brain of 
many an honest Republican, especially if assisted by 
an advertisement for lost heirs, cut out of a British 
newspaper. There is no estimating or believing, till 
we come into a position to know it, what foolery lurks 
latent in the breasts of very sensible people. Re- 
membering such sober extravagances, I should not be 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 35 

at all surprised to find that I am myself guilty of some 
unsuspected absurdity, that may appear to me the 
most substantial trait in my character. 

I might fill many pages with instances of this dis- 
eased American appetite for English soil. A respect- 
able-looking woman, well advanced in life, of sour 
aspect, exceedingly homely, but decidedly New-Eng- 
landish in figure and manners, came to my office with 
a great bundle of documents, at the very first glimpse 
of which I apprehended something terrible. Nor was 
I mistaken. The bundle contained evidences of her 
indubitable claim to the site on which Castle Street, 
the Town Hall, the Exchange, and all the principal 
business part of Liverpool have long been situated ; 
and, with considerable peremptoriness, the good lady 
signified her expectation that I should take charge of 
her suit, and prosecute it to judgment ; not, however, 
on the equitable condition of receiving half the value 
of the property recovered (which, in case of complete 
success, would have made both of us ten or twenty 
fold millionnaires), but without recompense or reim- 
bursement of legal expenses, solely as an incident of 
my official duty. Another time came two ladies, bear- 
ing a letter of emphatic introduction from his Excel- 
lency the Governor of their native State, who testified 
in most satisfactory terms to their social respectability. 
They were claimants of a great estate in Cheshire, and 
announced themselves as blood-relatives of Queen Vic- 
toria, — a point, however, which they deemed it expe- 
dient to keep in the background until their territorial 
rights should be established, apprehending that the 
Lord High Chancellor might otherwise be less likely 
to come to a fair decision in respect to them, from a 
probable disinclination to admit new members into the 



36 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

royal kin. Upon my honor, I imagine that they had 
an eye to the possibility of the eventual succession of 
one or both of them to the crown of Great Britain 
through superiority of title over the Brunswick line ; 
although, being maiden ladies, like their predecessor 
Elizabeth, they could hardly have hoped to establish a 
lasting dynasty upon the throne. It proves, I trust, 
a certain disinterestedness on my part, that, encounter- 
ing them thus in the dawn of their fortunes, I forbore 
to put in a plea for a future dukedom. 

Another visitor of the same class was a gentleman 
of refined manners, handsome figure, and remarkably 
intellectual aspect. Like many men of an adventur- 
ous cast, he had so quiet a deportment, and such an 
apparent disinclination to general sociability, that you 
would have fancied him moving always along some 
peaceful and secluded walk of life. Yet, literally from 
his first hour, he had been tossed upon the surges of 
a most varied and tumultuous existence, having been 
born at sea, of American parentage, but on board of a 
Spanish vessel, and spending many of the subsequent 
years in voyages, travels, and outlandish incidents and 
vicissitudes, which, methought, had hardly been par- 
alleled since the days of Gulliver or De Foe. When 
his dignified reserve was overcome, he had the faculty 
of narrating these adventures with wonderful elo- 
quence, working up his descriptive sketches with such 
intuitive perception of the picturesque points that the 
whole was thrown forward with a positively illusive 
effect, like matters of your own visual experience. In 
fact, they were so admirably done that I could never 
more than half believe them, because the genuine af- 
fairs of life are not apt to transact themselves so artis- 
tically. Many of his scenes were laid in the East, and 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 37 

among those seldom-visited archipelagoes of the In- 
dian Ocean, so that there was an Oriental fragrance 
breathing through his talk, and an odor of the Spice 
Islands still lingering in his garments. He had much 
to say of the delightful qualities of the Malay pirates, 
who, indeed, carry on a predatory warfare against the 
ships of all civilized nations, and cut every Christian 
throat among their prisoners ; but (except for deeds 
of that character, which are the rule and habit of their 
life, and matter of religion and conscience with them) 
they are a gentle-natured people, of primitive inno- 
cence and integrity. 

But his best story was about a race of men (if men 
they were) who seemed so fully to realize Swift's 
wicked fable of the Yahoos, that my friend was much 
exercised with psychological speculations whether or 
no they had any souls. They dwelt in the wilds of 
Ceylon, like other savage beasts, hairy, and spotted 
with tufts of fur, filthy, shameless, weaponless (though 
warlike in their individual bent), tool-less, houseless, 
language-less, except for a few guttural sounds, hid- 
eously dissonant, whereby they held some rudest kind 
of communication among themselves. They lacked 
both memory and foresight, and were wholly destitute 
of government, social institutions, or law or rulership 
of any description, except the immediate tyranny of 
the strongest ; radically untamable, moreover, save 
that the people of the country managed to subject a 
few of the less ferocious and stupid ones to outdoor 
servitude among their other cattle. They were beastly 
in almost all their attributes, and that to such a de- 
gree that the observer, losing sight of any link be- 
twixt them and manhood, could generally witness 
their brutalities without greater horror than at those 



38 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

of some disagreeable quadruped in a menagerie. And 
yet, at times, comparing what were the lowest general 
traits in his own race with what was highest in these 
abominable monsters, he found a ghastly similitude 
that half compelled him to recognize them as human 
brethren. 

After these Gulliverian researches, my agreeable ac- 
quaintance had fallen under the ban of the Dutch gov- 
ernment, and had suffered (this, at least, being matter 
of fact) nearly two years' imprisonment, with confisca- 
tion of a large amount of property, for which Mr. Bel- 
mont, our minister at the Hague, had just made a 
peremptory demand of reimbursement and damages. 
Meanwhile, since arriving in England on his way to 
the United States, he had been providentially led to 
inquire into the circumstances of his birth on ship- 
board, and had discovered that not himself alone, but 
another baby, had come into the world during the 
same voyage of the prolific vessel, and that there were 
almost irrefragable reasons for believing that these 
two children had been assigned to the wrong mothers. 
Many reminiscences of his early flays confirmed him 
in the idea that his nominal parents were aware of the 
exchange. The family to which he felt authorized to 
attribute his lineage was that of a nobleman, in the 
picture-gallery of whose country-seat (whence, if I 
mistake not, our adventurous friend had just re- 
turned) he had discovered a portrait bearing a strik- 
ing resemblance to himself. As soon as he should 
have reported the outrageous action of the Dutch gov- 
ernment to President Pierce and the Secretary of 
State, and recovered the confiscated property, he pur- 
posed to return to England and establish his claim to 
the nobleman's title and estate, 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 39 

I had accepted his Oriental fantasies (which, in- 
deed, to do him justice, have been recorded by scien- 
tific societies among the genuine phenomena of nat- 
ural history), not as matters of indubitable credence, 
but as allowable specimens of an imaginative travel- 
ler's vivid coloring and rich embroidery on the coarse 
texture and dull neutral tints of truth. The English 
romance was among the latest communications that he 
intrusted to my private ear ; and as soon as I heard 
the first chapter, — so wonderfully akin to what I 
might have wrought out of my own head, not unprac- 
tised in such figments, — I began to repent having 
made myself responsible for the future nobleman's 
passage homeward in the next Collins steamer. Never- 
theless, should his English rent-roll fall a little be- 
hindhand, his Dutch claim for a hundred thousand 
dollars was certainly in the hands of our government, 
and might at least be valuable to the extent of thirty 
pounds, which I had engaged to pay on his behalf. 
But I have reason to fear that his Dutch riches turned 
out to be Dutch gilt or fairy gold, and his English 
country-seat a mere castle in the air, — which I ex- 
ceedingly regret, for he was a delightful companion 
and a very gentlemanly man. 

A Consul, in his position of universal responsibility, 
the general adviser and helper, sometimes finds him- 
self compelled to assume the guardianship of person- 
ages who, in their own sphere, are supposed capable 
of superintending the highest interests of whole com- 
munities. An elderly Irishman, a naturalized citizen, 
once put the desire and expectation of all our penni- 
less vagabonds into a very suitable phrase, by pathet- 
ically entreating me to be a " father to him " ; and, 
simple as I sit scribbling here, I have acted a father's 



40 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

part, not only by scores of such unthrifty old children 
as himself, but by a progeny of far loftier pretensions. 
It may be well for persons who are conscious of any 
radical weakness in their character, any besetting sin, 
any unlawful propensity, any unhallowed impulse, 
which (while surrounded with the manifold restraints 
that protect a man from that treacherous and lifelong 
enemy, his lower self, in the circle of society where 
he is at home) they may have succeeded in keeping 
under the lock and key of strictest propriety, — it 
may be well for them, before seeking the perilous free- 
dom of a distant land, released from the watchful eyes 
of neighborhoods and coteries, lightened of that weari- 
some burden, an immaculate name, and blissfully ob- 
scure after years of local prominence, — it may be 
well for such individuals to know that when they set 
foot on a foreign shore, the long - imprisoned Evil, 
scenting a wild license in the unaccustomed atmos- 
phere, is apt to grow riotous in its iron cage. It rat- 
tles the rusty barriers with gigantic turbulence, and if 
there be an infirm joint anywhere in the framework, it 
breaks madly forth, compressing the mischief of a life- 
time into a little space. 

A parcel of letters had been accumulating at the 
Consulate for two or three weeks, directed to a certain 
Doctor of Divinity, who had left America by a sail- 
ing-packet and was still upon the sea. In due time, 
the vessel arrived, and the reverend Doctor paid me a 
visit. He was a fine-looking middle-aged gentleman, 
a perfect model of clerical propriety, scholar-like, yet 
with the air of a man of the world rather than a stu- 
dent, though overspread with the graceful sanctity of 
a popular metropolitan divine, a part of whose duty it 
might be to exemplify the natural accordance between 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 41 

Christianity and good-breeding. He seemed a little 
excited, as an American is apt to be on first arriving 
in England, but conversed with intelligence as well as 
animation, making himself so agreeable that his visit 
stood out in considerable relief from the monotony of 
my daily commonplace. As I learned from authentic 
sources, he was somewhat distinguished in his own 
region for fervor and eloquence in the pulpit, but was 
now compelled to relinquish it temporarily for the 
purpose of renovating his impaired health by an ex- 
tensive tour in Europe. Promising to dine with me, 
he took up his bundle of letters and went away. 

The Doctor, however, failed to make his appearance 
at dinner-time, or to apologize the next day for his ab- 
sence ; and in the course of a day or two more, I for- 
got all about him, concluding that he must have set 
forth on his Continental travels, the plan of which he 
had sketched out at our interview. But, by and by, I 
received a call from the master of the vessel in which 
he had arrived. He was in some alarm about his pas- 
senger, whose luggage remained on shipboard, but of 
whom nothing had been heard or seen since the mo- 
ment of his departure from the Consulate. We con- 
ferred together, the captain and I, about the expe- 
diency of setting the police on the traces (if any were 
to be found) of our vanished friend ; but it struck me 
that the good captain was singularly reticent, and that 
there was something a little mysterious in a few points 
that he hinted at rather than expressed ; so that, scru- 
tinizing the affair carefully, I surmised that the inti- 
macy of life on shipboard might have taught him more 
about the reverend gentleman than, for some reason 
or other, he deemed it prudent to reveal. At home, 
in our native country, I would have looked to the Doc- 



42 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

tor's personal safety and left his reputation to take 
care of itself, knowing that the good fame of a thou- 
sand saintly clergymen would amply dazzle out any 
lamentable spot on a single brother's character. But 
in scornful and invidious England, on the idea that 
the credit of the sacred office was measurably intrusted 
to my discretion, I could not endure, for the sake of 
American Doctors of Divinity generally, that this par- 
ticular Doctor should cut an ignoble figure in the po- 
lice reports of the English newspapers, except at the 
last necessity. The clerical body, I flatter myself, will 
acknowledge that I acted on their own principle. Be- 
sides, it was now too late ; the mischief and violence, 
if any had been impending, were not of a kind which 
it requires the better part of a week to perpetrate ; 
and to sum up the entire matter, I felt certain, from a 
good deal of somewhat similar experience, that, if the 
missing Doctor still breathed this vital air, he would 
turn up at the Consulate as soon as his money should 
be stolen or spent. 

Precisely a week after this reverend person's disap- 
pearance, there came to my office a tall, middle-aged 
gentleman in a blue military surtout, braided at the 
seams, but out at elbows, and as shabby as if the 
wearer had been bivouacking in it throughout a Cri- 
mean campaign. It was buttoned up to the very chin, 
except where three or four of the buttons were lost ; 
nor was there any glimpse of a white shirt-collar il- 
luminating the rusty black cravat. A grisly mustache 
was just beginning to roughen the stranger's upper 
lip. He looked disreputable to the last degree, but 
still had a ruined air of good society glimmering about 
him, like a few specks of polish on a sword-blade that 
has lain corroding in a mud-puddle. I took him to be 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 43 

some American marine officer, of dissipated habits, or 
perhaps a cashiered British major, stumbling into the 
wrong quarters through the unrectified bewilderment 
of the last night's debauch. He greeted me, however, 
with polite familiarity, as though we had been previ- 
ously acquainted ; whereupon I drew coldly back (as 
sensible people naturally do, whether from strangers 
or former friends, when too evidently at odds with 
fortune) and requested to know who my visitor might 
be, and what was his business at the Consulate. u Am 
I then so changed ? " he exclaimed with a vast depth 
of tragic intonation ; and after a little blind and be- 
wildered talk, behold ! the truth flashed upon me. It 
was the Doctor of Divinity? If I had meditated a 
scene or a coup de thedtre, I could not have contrived 
a more effectual one than by this simple and genuine 
difficulty of recognition. The poor Divine must have 
felt that he had lost his personal identity through the 
misadventures of one little week. And, to say the 
truth, he did look as if, like Job, on account of his 
especial sanctity, he had been delivered over to the 
direst temptations of Satan, and proving weaker than 
the man of Uz, the Arch Enemy had been empow- 
ered to drag him through Tophet, transforming him, 
in the process, from the most decorous clergyman 
into the rowdiest and dirtiest of disbanded officers. I 
never fathomed the mystery of his military costume, 
but conjectured that a lurking sense of fitness had 
induced him to exchange his clerical garments for this 
habit of a sinner ; nor can I tell precisely into what 
pitfall, not more of vice than terrible calamity, he had 
precipitated himself, — being more than satisfied to 
know that the outcasts of society can sink no lower 
than this poor, desecrated wretch had sunk. 



44 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

The opportunity, I presume, does not often happen 
to a layman, of administering moral and religious re- 
proof to a Doctor of Divinity ; but finding the occa- 
sion thrust upon me, and the hereditary Puritan wax- 
ing strong in my breast, I deemed it a matter of con- 
science not to let it pass entirely unimproved. The 
truth is, I was unspeakably shocked and disgusted. 
Not, however, that I was then to learn that clergymen 
are made of the same flesh and blood as other people, 
and perhaps lack one small safeguard which the rest 
of us possess, because they are aware of their own pec- 
cability, and therefore cannot look up to the clerical 
class for the proof of the possibility of a pure life on 
earth, with such reverential confidence as we are prone 
to do. But I remembered the innocent faith of my 
boyhood, and the good old silver - headed clergyman, 
who seemed to me as much a saint then on earth as he 
is now in heaven, and partly for whose sake, through 
all these darkening years, I retain a devout, though 
not intact nor unwavering respect for the entire fra- 
ternity. What a hideous wrong, therefore, had the 
backslider inflicted on his brethren, and still more on 
me, who much needed whatever fragments of broken 
reverence (broken, not as concerned religion, but its 
earthly institutions and professors) it might yet be 
possible to patch into a sacred image ! Should all 
pulpits and communion-tables have thenceforth a stain 
upon them, and the guilty one go unrebuked for it ? 
So I spoke to the unhappy man as I never thought 
myself warranted in speaking to any other mortal, 
hitting him hard, doing my utmost to find out his vul- 
nerable part, and prick him into the depths of it. 
And not without more effect than I had dreamed Qfj 
or desired ! 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 45 

No doubt, the novelty of the Doctor's reversed posi- 
tion, thus standing up to receive such a fulmination 
as the clergy have heretofore arrogated the exclusive 
right of inflicting, might give additional weight and 
sting to the words which I found utterance for. But 
there was another reason (which, had I in the least 
suspected it, would have closed my lips at once) for 
his feeling morbidly sensitive to the cruel rebuke that I 
administered. The unfortunate man had come to me, 
laboring under one of the consequences of his riotous 
outbreak, in the shape of delirium tremens ; he bore a 
hell within the compass of his own breast, all the tor- 
ments of which blazed up with tenfold inveteracy when 
I thus took upon myself the Devil's office of stirring 
up the red-hot embers. His emotions, as well as the 
external movement and expression of them by voice, 
countenance, and gesture, were terribly exaggerated 
by the tremendous vibration of nerves resulting from 
the disease. It was the deepest tragedy I ever wit- 
nessed. I know sufficiently, from that one experience, 
how a condemned soul would manifest its agonies ; 
and for the future, if I have anything to do with sin- 
ners, I mean to operate upon them through sympathy 
and not rebuke. What had I to do with rebuking 
him ? The disease, long latent in his heart, had shown 
itself in a frightful eruption on the surface of his life. 
That was all ! Is it a thing to scold the sufferer for ? 

To conclude this wretched story, the poor Doctor of 
Divinity, having been robbed of all his money in this 
little airing beyond the limits of propriety, was easily 
persuaded to give up the intended tour and return to 
his bereaved flock, who, very probably, were thereafter 
conscious of an increased unction in his soul-stirring 
eloquence, without suspecting the awful depths into 



#6 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

which their pastor had dived in quest of it. His voice 
is now silent. I leave it to members of his own pro- 
fession to decide whether it was better for him thus to 
sin outright, and so to be let into the miserable secret 
what manner of man he was, or to have, gone through 
life outwardly unspotted, making the first discovery of 
his latent evil at the judgment-seat. It has occurred 
to me that his dire calamity, as both he and I regarded 
it, might have been the only method by which pre- 
cisely such a man as himself, and so situated, could be 
redeemed. He has learned, ere now, how that matter 
stood. 

For a man, with a natural tendency to meddle with 
other people's business, there could not possibly be a 
more congenial sphere than the Liverpool Consulate. 
For myself, I had never been in the habit of feeling 
that I could sufficiently comprehend any particular 
conjunction of circumstances with human character, 
to justify me in thrusting in my awkward agency 
among the intricate and unintelligible machinery of 
Providence. I have always hated to give advice, es- 
pecially when there is a prospect of its being taken. 
It is only one-eyed people who love to advise, or have 
any spontaneous promptitude of action, When a man 
opens both his eyes, he generally sees about as many 
reasons for acting in any one way as in any other, and 
quite as many for acting in neither ; and is therefore 
likely to leave his friends to regulate their own con. 
duct, and also to remain quiet as regards his especial 
affairs till necessity shall prick him onward. Never- 
theless, the world and individuals flourish upon a con- 
stant succession of blunders. The secret of English 
practical success lies in their characteristic faculty of 
shutting one eye, whereby they get so distinct and de- 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 47 

cided a view of what immediately concerns them that 
they go stumbling towards it over a hundred insur- 
mountable obstacles, and achieve a magnificent tri- 
umph without ever being aware of half its difficulties. 
If General McClellan could but have shut his left eye, 
the right one would long ago have guided us into 
Richmond. Meanwhile, I have strayed far away from 
the Consulate, where, as I was about to say, I was 
compelled, in spite of my disinclination, to impart both 
advice and assistance in multifarious affairs that did 
not personally concern me, and presume that I effected 
about as little mischief as other men in similar con- 
tingencies. The duties of the office carried me to 
prisons, police-courts, hospitals, lunatic asylums, coro- 
ner's inquests, death-beds, funerals, and brought me 
in contact with insane people, criminals, ruined specu- 
lators, wild adventurers, diplomatists, brother-consuls, 
and all manner of simpletons and unfortunates, in 
greater number and variety than I had ever dreamed 
of as pertaining to America ; in addition to whom 
there was an equivalent multitude of English rogues, 
dexterously counterfeiting the genuine Yankee article. 
It required great discrimination not to be taken in by 
these last-mentioned scoundrels ; for they knew how to 
imitate our national traits, had been at great pains to 
instruct themselves as regarded American localities, 
and were not readily to be caught by a cross-examina- 
tion as to the topographical features, public institu- 
tions, or prominent inhabitants of the places where 
they pretended to belong. The best shibboleth I ever 
hit upon lay in the pronunciation of the word " been " 
which the English invariably make to rhyme with 
" green," and we Northerners, at least (in accordance, 
I think, with the custom of Shakespeare's time), uni- 
versally pronounce " bin." 



48 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

All the matters that I have been treating of, how- 
ever, were merely incidental, and quite distinct from 
the real business of the office. A great part of the 
wear and tear of mind and temper resulted from the 
bad relations between the seamen and officers of Amer- 
ican ships. Scarcely a morning passed, but that some 
sailor came to show the marks of his ill-usage on ship- 
board. Often, it was a whole crew of them, each with 
his broken head or livid bruise, and all testifying with 
one voice to a constant series of savage outrages dur- 
ing the voyage ; or, it might be, they laid an accusa- 
tion of actual murder, perpetrated by the first or sec- 
ond officers, with many blows of steel - knuckles, a 
rope's end, or a marline-spike, or by the captain, in 
the twinkling of an eye, with a shot of his pistol. 
Taking the seamen's view of the case, you would sup- 
pose that the gibbet was hungry for the murderers. 
Listening to the captain's defence, you would seem to 
discover that he and his officers were the humanest of 
mortals, but were driven to a wholesome severity by 
the mutinous conduct of the crew, who, moreover, had 
themselves slain their comrade in the drunken riot 
and confusion of the first day or two after they were 
shipped. Looked at judicially, there appeared to be 
no right side to the matter, nor any right side possi- 
ble in so thoroughly vicious a system as that of the 
American mercantile marine. The Consul could do 
little, except to take depositions, hold forth the greasy 
Testament to be profaned anew with perjured kisses, 
and, in a few instances of murder or manslaughter, 
carry the case before an English magistrate, who gen- 
erally decided that the evidence was too contradictory 
to authorize the transmission of the accused for trial 
in America. The newspapers all over England con* 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 49 

tained paragraphs, inveighing against the cruelties of 
American shipmasters. The British Parliament took 
up the matter (for nobody is so humane as John Bull, 
when his benevolent propensities are to be gratified 
by finding fault with his neighbor), and caused Lord 
John Russell to remonstrate with our government on 
the outrages for which it was responsible before the 
world, and which it failed to prevent or punish. The 
American Secretary of State, old General Cass, re- 
sponded, with perfectly astounding ignorance of the 
subject, to the effect that the statements of outrages 
had probably been exaggerated, that the present laws 
of the United States were quite adequate to deal with 
them, and that the interference of the British Minis- 
ter was uncalled for. 

The truth is, that the state of affairs was really very 
horrible, and could be met by no laws at that time (or 
I presume now) in existence. I once thought of writ- 
ing a pamphlet on the subject, but quitted the Consu- 
late before finding time to effect my purpose ; and all 
that phase of my life immediately assumed so dream- 
like a consistency that I despaired of making it seem 
solid or tangible to the public. And now it looks dis- 
tant and dim, like troubles of a century ago. The ori- 
gin of the evil lay in the character of the seamen, 
scarcely any of whom were American, but the off- 
scourings and refuse of all the seaports of the world, 
such stuff as piracy is made of, together with a con- 
siderable intermixture of returning emigrants, and 
a sprinkling of absolutely kidnapped American citi- 
zens. Even with such material the ships were very 
inadequately manned. The shipmaster found himself 
upon the deep, with a vast responsibility of property 
and human life upon his hands, and no means of sal- 



50 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

vation except by compelling his inefficient and demor- 
alized crew to heavier exertions than could reasonably 
be required of the same number of able seamen. By 
law he had been intrusted with no discretion of judi- 
cious punishment; he therefore habitually left the 
whole matter of discipline to his irresponsible mates, 
men often of scarcely a superior quality to the crew, 
Hence ensued a great mass of petty outrages, unjusti 
fiable assaults, shameful indignities, and nameless cru- 
elty, demoralizing alike to the perpetrators and the 
sufferers ; these enormities fell into the ocean between 
the two countries, and could be punished in neither. 
Many miserable stories come back upon my memory 
as I write ; wrongs that were immense, but for which 
nobody could be held responsible, and which, indeed, 
the closer you looked into them, the more they lost the 
aspect of wilful misdoing, and assumed that of an in- 
evitable calamity. It was the fault of a system, the 
misfortune of an individual. Be that as it may, how- 
ever, there will be no possibility of dealing effectually 
with these troubles as long as we deem it inconsistent 
with our national dignity or interests to allow the 
English courts, under such restrictions as may seem 
fit, a jurisdiction over offences perpetrated on board 
our vessels in mid-ocean. 

In such a life as this, the American shipmaster de- 
velops himself into a man of iron energies, dauntless 
courage, and inexhaustible resource, at the expense, it 
must be acknowledged, of some of the higher and 
gentler traits which might do him excellent service in 
maintaining his authority. The class has deteriorated 
of late years on account of the narrower field of selec- 
tion, owing chiefly to the diminution of that excellent 
body of respectably educated New England seamen, 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 51 

from the flower of whom the officers used to be re- 
cruited. Yet I found them, in many cases, very 
agreeable and intelligent companions, with less non- 
sense about them than landsmen usually have, eschew- 
ers of fine-spun theories, delighting in square and 
tangible ideas, but occasionally infested with preju- 
dices that stuck to their brains like barnacles to a 
ship's bottom. I never could flatter myself that I was 
a general favorite with them. One or two, perhaps, 
even now, would scarcely meet me on amicable terms. 
Endowed universally with a great pertinacity of will, 
they especially disliked the interference of a consul 
with their management on shipboard ; notwithstand- 
ing which I thrust in my very limited authority at 
every available opening, and did the utmost that lay 
in my power, though with lamentably small effect, 
towards enforcing a better kind of discipline. They 
thought, no doubt (and on plausible grounds enough* 
but scarcely appreciating just that one little grain of 
hard New England sense, oddly thrown in among the 
flimsier composition of the Consul's character), that 
he, a landsman, a bookman, and, as people said of 
him, a fanciful recluse, could not possibly understand 
anything of the difficulties or the necessities of a ship- 
master's position. But their cold regards were rather 
acceptable than otherwise, for it is exceedingly awk- 
ward to assume a judicial austerity in the morning 
towards a man with whom you have been hobnobbing 
over night. 

With the technical details of the business of that 
great Consulate (for great it then was, though now, 
I fear, wof ully fallen off, and perhaps never to be re- 
vived in anything like its former extent), I did not 
much interfere. They could safely be left to the 



52 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

treatment of two as faithful, upright, and competent 
subordinates, both Englishmen, as ever a man was 
fortunate enough to meet with, in a line of life alto- 
gether new and strange to him. I had come over 
with instructions to supply both their places with 
Americans, but, possessing a happy faculty of know- 
ing my own interest and the public's, I quietly kept 
hold of them, being little inclined to open the consu- 
lar doors to a spy of the State Department or an in- 
triguer for my own office. The venerable Vice-Con- 
sul, Mr. Pearce, had witnessed the successive arrivals 
of a score of newly-appointed Consuls, shadowy and 
short-lived dignitaries, and carried his reminiscences 
back to the epoch of Consul Maury, who was ap- 
pointed by Washington, and has acquired almost the 
grandeur of a mythical personage in the annals of the 
Consulate. The principal clerk, Mr. Wilding, who 
has since succeeded to the Yice-Consulship, was a man 
of English integrity, — not that the English are more 
honest than ourselves, but only there is a certain 
sturdy reliableness common among them, which we do 
not quite so invariably manifest in just these subordi- 
nate positions, — of English integrity, combined with 
American acuteness of intellect, quick-wittedness, and 
diversity of talent. It seemed an immense pity that 
he should wear out his life at a desk, without a step in 
advance from year's end to year's end, when, had it 
been his luck to be born on our side of the water, his 
bright faculties and clear probity would have insured 
him eminent success in whatever path he might adopt* 
Meanwhile, it would have been a sore mischance to 
me, had any better fortune on his part deprived me of 
Mr. Wilding's services. 

A fair amount of common-sense, some acquaintance 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 53 

with the United States Statutes, an insight into char- 
acter, a tact of management, a general knowledge of 
the world, and a reasonable but not too inveterately 
decided preference for his own will and judgment over 
those of interested people, — these natural attributes 
and moderate acquirements will enable a consul to 
perform many of his duties respectably, but not to 
dispense with a great variety of other qualifications, 
only attainable by long experience. Yet, I think, few 
consuls are so well accomplished. An appointment of 
whatever grade, in the diplomatic or consular service 
of America, is too often what the English call a 
" job " ; that is to say, it is made on private and per- 
sonal grounds, without a paramount eye to the public 
good or the gentleman's especial fitness for the posi- 
tion. It is not too much to say (of course allowing 
for a brilliant exception here and there), that an 
American never is thoroughly qualified for a foreign 
post, nor has time to make himself so, before the rev- 
olution of the political wheel discards him from his 
office. Our country wrongs itself by permitting such 
a system of unsuitable appointments, and, still more, 
of removals for no cause, just when the incumbent 
might be beginning to ripen into usefulness. Mere 
ignorance of official detail is of comparatively small 
moment ; though it is considered indispensable, I pre- 
sume, that a man in any private capacity shall be 
thoroughly acquainted with the machinery and opera- 
tion of his business, and shall not necessarily lose his 
position on having attained such knowledge. But 
there are so many more important things to be thought 
of, in the qualifications of a foreign resident, that his 
technical dexterity or clumsiness is hardly worth men- 
tioning. 



54 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

One great part of a consul's duty, for example, 
should consist in building up for himself a recognized 
position in the society where he resides, so that his 
local influence might be felt in behalf of his own coun- 
try, and, so far as they are compatible (as they gener- 
ally are to the utmost extent), for the interests of both 
nations. The foreign city should know that it has a 
permanent inhabitant and a hearty well-wisher in him. 
There are many conjunctures (and one of them is now 
upon us) where a long-established, honored, and trusted 
American citizen, holding a public position under our 
government in such a town as Liverpool, might go far 
towards swaying and directing the sympathies of the 
inhabitants. He might throw his own weight into the 
balance against mischief-makers; he might have set 
his foot on the first little spark of malignant purpose, 
which the next wind may blow into a national war. 
But we wilfully give up all advantages of this kind. 
The position is totally beyond the attainment of an 
American; there to-day, bristling all over with the 
porcupine quills of our Republic, and gone to-morrow, 
just as he is becoming sensible of the broader and 
more generous patriotism which might almost amal- 
gamate with that of England, without losing an atom 
of its native force and flavor. In the changes that 
appear to await us, and some of which, at least, can 
hardly fail to be for good, let us hope for a reform in 
this matter. 

For myself, as the gentle reader would spare me the 
trouble of saying, I was not at all the kind of man to 
grow into such an ideal Consul as I have here sug- 
gested. I never in my life desired to be burdened 
with public influence. I disliked my oflice from the 
first, and never came into any good accordance with 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 55 

it. Its dignity, so far as it had any, was an encum- 
brance ; the attentions it drew upon me (such as in- 
vitations to Mayors' banquets and public celebrations 
of all kinds, where, to my horror, I found myself ex- 
pected to stand up and speak) were — as I may say 
without incivility or ingratitude, because there is noth- 
ing personal in that sort of hospitality — - a bore. The 
official business was irksome, and often painful. There 
was nothing pleasant about the whole affair, except 
the emoluments ; and even those, never too bounti- 
fully reaped, were diminished by more than half in the 
second or third year of my incumbency. All this be- 
ing true, I was quite prepared, in advance of the in- 
auguration of Mr. Buchanan, to send in my resigna- 
tion. When my successor arrived, I drew the long, 
delightful breath which first made me thoroughly sen- 
sible what an unnatural life I had been leading, and 
compelled me to admire myself for having battled with 
it so sturdily. The new - comer proved to be a very 
genial and agreeable gentleman, an F. F. V., and, as 
he pleasantly acknowledged, a Southern Fire-Eater, — 
an announcement to which I responded, with similar 
good -humor and self-complacency, by parading my 
descent from an ancient line of Massachusetts Puri- 
tans. Since our brief acquaintanceship, my fire-eat- 
ing friend has had ample opportunities to banquet on 
his favorite diet, hot and hot, in the Confederate ser- 
vice. For myself, as soon as I was out of office, the 
retrospect began to look unreal. I could scarcely be- 
lieve that it was I, — that figure whom they called a 
Consul, — but a sort of Double Ganger, who had been 
permitted to assume my aspect, under which he went 
through his shadowy duties with a tolerable show of 
efficiency, while my real self had lain, as regarded my 



56 CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 

proper mode of being and acting, in a state of sus- 
pended animation. 

The same sense of illusion still pursues me. There 
is some mistake in this matter. I have been writing 
about another man's consular experiences, with which, 
through some mysterious medium of transmitted ideas, 
I find myself intimately acquainted, but in which I 
cannot possibly have had a personal interest. Is it 
not a dream altogether ? The figure of that poor 
Doctor of Divinity looks wonderfully lifelike ; so do 
those of the Oriental adventurer with the visionary 
coronet above his brow, and the moonstruck visitor of 
the Queen, and the poor old wanderer, seeking his 
native country through English highways and byways 
for almost thirty years ; and so would a hundred 
others that I might summon up with similar distinct- 
ness. But were they more than shadows ? Surely, I 
think not. Nor are these present pages a bit of in- 
trusive autobiography. Let not the reader wrong me 
by supposing it. I never should have written with 
half such unreserve, had it been a portion of this life 
congenial with my nature, which I am living now, in- 
stead of a series of incidents and characters entirely 
apart from my own concerns, and on which the qual- 
ities personally proper to me could have had no bear- 
ing. Almost the only real incidents, as I see them 
now, were the visits of a young English friend, a 
scholar and a literary amateur, between whom and 
myself there sprung up an affectionate, and, I trust, 
not transitory regard. He used to come and sit or 
stand by my fireside, talking vivaciously and elo- 
quently with me about literature and life, his own 
national characteristics and mine, with such kindly en- 
durance of the many rough republicanisms wherewith 



CONSULAR EXPERIENCES. 57 

I assailed him, and such frank and amiable assertion 
of all sorts of English prejudices and mistakes, that I 
understood his countrymen infinitely the better for 
him, and was almost prepared to love the intensest 
Englishman of them all, for his sake. It would 
gratify my cherished remembrance of this dear friend, 
if I could manage, without offending him, or letting 
the public know it, to introduce his name upon my 
page. Bright was the illumination of my dusky little 
apartment, as often as he made his appearance there ! 
The English sketches which I have been offering to 
the public comprise a few of the more external, and 
therefore more readily manageable, things that I took 
note of, in many escapes from the imprisonment of my 
consular servitude. Liverpool, though not very de- 
lightful as a place of residence, is a most convenient 
and admirable point to get away from. London is 
only five hours off by the fast train. Chester, the most 
curious town in England, with its encompassing wall, 
its ancient rows, and its venerable cathedral, is close 
at hand. North Wales, with all its hills and ponds, 
its noble sea-scenery, its multitude of gray castles and 
strange old villages, may be glanced at in a summer 
day or two. The lakes and mountains of Cumberland 
and Westmoreland may be reached before dinner-time. 
The haunted and legendary Isle of Man, a little king- 
dom by itself, lies within the scope of an afternoon's 
voyage. Edinburgh or Glasgow are attainable over 
night, and Loch Lomond betimes in the morning. Vis- 
iting these famous localities, and a great many others, 
I hope that I do not compromise my American patriot- 
ism by acknowledging that I was often conscious of a 
fervent hereditary attachment to the native soil of our 
forefathers, and felt it to be our own Old Home. 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 

In the course of several visits and stays of consid- 
erable length we acquired a homelike feeling towards 
Leamington, and came back thither again and again, 
chiefly because we had been there before. Wandering 
and wayside people, such as we had long since become, 
retain a few of the instincts that belong to a more set- 
tled way of life, and often prefer familiar and com- 
monplace objects (for the very reason that they are 
so) to the dreary strangeness of scenes that might be 
thought much better worth the seeing. There is a 
small nest of a place in Leamington — at No. 10 
Lansdowne Circus — upon which, to this day, my remi- 
niscences are apt to settle as one of the cosiest nooks 
in England or in the world ; not that it had any spe- 
cial charm of its own, but only that we stayed long 
enough to know it well, and even to grow a little tired 
of it. In my opinion, the very tediousness of home 
and friends makes a part of what we love them for ; if 
it be not mixed in sufficiently with the other elements 
of life, there may be mad enjoyment, but no happiness. 

The modest abode to which I have alluded forms 
one of a circular range of pretty, moderate-sized, two- 
story houses, all built on nearly the same plan, and each 
provided with its little grass-plot, its flowers, its tufts 
of box trimmed into globes and other fantastic shapes, 
and its verdant hedges shutting the house in from the 
common drive, and dividing it from its equally cosey 
neighbors. Coming out of the door, and taking a turn 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 59 

round the circle of sister-dwellings, it is difficult to 
find your way back by any distinguishing individual- 
ity of your own habitation. In the centre of the Cir- 
cus is a space fenced in with iron railing, a small play- 
place and sylvan retreat for the children of the pre- 
cinct, permeated by brief paths through the fresh Eng- 
lish grass, and shadowed by various shrubbery ; amid 
which, if you like, you may fancy yourself in a deep 
seclusion, though probably the mark of eye-shot from 
the windows of all the surrounding houses. But, in 
truth, with regard to the rest of the town and the 
world at large, an abode here is a genuine seclusion ; 
for the ordinary stream of life does not run through 
this little, quiet pool, and few or none of the inhabi- 
tants seem to be troubled with any business or outside 
activities. I used to set them down as half-pay offi- 
cers, dowagers of narrow income, elderly maiden ladies, 
and other people of respectability, but small account, 
such as hang on the world's skirts, rather than actually 
belong to it. The quiet of the place was seldom dis- 
turbed, except by the grocer and butcher, who came to 
receive orders ; or by the cabs, hackney-coaches, and 
Bath-chairs, in which the ladies took an infrequent air- 
ing ; or the livery-steed which the retired captain some- 
times bestrode for a morning ride ; or by the red-coated 
postman who went his rounds twice a day to deliver 
letters, and again in the evening, ringing a hand-bell, 
to take letters for the mail. In merely mentioning 
these slight interruptions of its sluggish stillness, I 
seem to myself to disturb too much the atmosphere of 
quiet that brooded over the spot ; whereas its impres- 
sion upon me was, that the world had never found the 
way hither, or had forgotten it, and that the fortunate 
inhabitants were the only ones who possessed the spell- 



60 LEAMINGTON SPA, 

word of admittance. Nothing could have suited me 
better, at the time ; for I had been holding a position 
of public servitude, which imposed upon me (among 
a great many lighter duties) the ponderous necessity 
of being universally civil and sociable. 

Nevertheless, if a man were seeking the bustle of 
society, he might find it more readily in Leamington 
than in most other English towns. It is a permanent 
watering-place, a sort of institution to which I do not 
know any close parallel in American life : for such 
places as Saratoga bloom only for the summer-season, 
and offer a thousand dissimilitudes even then ; while 
Leamington seems to be always in flower, and serves 
as a home to the homeless all the year round. Its 
original nucleus, the plausible excuse for the town's 
coming into prosperous existence, lies in the fiction of 
a chalybeate well, which, indeed, is so far a reality 
that out of its magical depths have gushed streets, 
groves, gardens, mansions, shops, and churches, and 
spread themselves along the banks of the little river 
Learn. This miracle accomplished, the beneficent 
fountain has retired beneath a pump-room, and ap- 
pears to have given up all pretensions to the remedial 
virtues formerly attributed to it. I know not whether 
its waters are ever tasted nowadays ; but not the less 
does Leamington — in pleasant Warwickshire, at the 
very midmost point of England, in a good hunting 
neighborhood, and surrounded by country-seats and 
castles — continue to be a resort of transient visitors s 
and the more permanent abode of a class of genteel, 
unoccupied, well - to - do, but not very wealthy people, 
such as are hardly known among ourselves. Persons 
who have no country-houses, and whose fortunes are 
inadequate to a London expenditure, find here, I sup 
pose, a sort of town and country life in one. 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 61 

In its present aspect the town is of no great age. 
Tn contrast with the antiquity of many places in its 
neighborhood, it has a bright, new face, and seems al- 
most to smile even amid the sombreness of an English 
autumn. Nevertheless, it is hundreds upon hundreds 
of years old, if we reckon up that sleepy lapse of time 
during which it existed as a small village of thatched 
houses, clustered round a priory ; and it would still 
have been precisely such a rural village, but for a cer- 
tain Dr. Jephson, who lived within the memory of 
man, and who found out the magic well, and foresaw 
what fairy wealth might be made to flow from it. A 
public garden has been laid out along the margin of 
the Learn, and called the Jephson Garden, in honor of 
him who created the prosperity of his native spot. A 
little way within the garden-gate there is a circular 
temple of Grecian architecture, beneath the dome of 
which stands a marble statue of the good Doctor, very 
well executed, and representing him with a face of 
fussy activity and benevolence : just the kind of man, 
if luck favored him, to build up the fortunes of those 
about him, or, quite as probably, to blight his whole 
neighborhood by some disastrous speculation. 

The Jephson Garden is very beautiful, like most 
other English pleasure-grounds ; for, aided by their 
moist climate and not too fervid sun, the landscape- 
gardeners excel in converting flat or tame surfaces 
into attractive scenery, chiefly through the skilful ar- 
rangement of trees and shrubbery. An Englishman 
aims at this effect even in the little patches under the 
windows of a suburban villa and achieves it on a 
larger scale in a tract of many acres. The Garden is 
shadowed with trees of a fine growth, standing alone, 
or in dusky groves and dense entanglements, pervaded 



62 LEAMINGTON SPA. 

by woodland paths ; and emerging from these plea* 
ant glooms, we come upon a breadth of sunshine, 
where the greensward — so vividly green that it has 
a kind of lustre in it — is spotted with beds of gem- 
like flowers. Rustic chairs and benches are scattered 
about, some of them ponderously fashioned out of the 
stumps of obtruncated trees, and others more artfully 
made with intertwining branches, or perhaps an imi- 
tation of such frail handiwork in iron. In a central 
part of the Garden is an archery-ground, where laugh- 
ing maidens practise at the butts, generally missing 
their ostensible mark, but, by the mere grace of their 
action, sending an unseen shaft into some young man's 
heart. There is space, moreover, within these pre- 
cincts, for an artificial lake, with a little green island 
in the midst of it; both lake and island being the 
haunt of swans, whose aspect and movement in the 
water are most beautiful and stately, — most infirm, 
disjointed, and decrepit, when, unadvisedly, they see 
fit to emerge, and try to walk upon dry land. In the 
latter case, they look like a breed of uncommonly ill- 
contrived geese ; and I record the matter here for the 
sake of the moral, — that we should never pass judg- 
ment on the merits of any person or thing, unless we 
behold them in the sphere and circumstances to which 
they are specially adapted. In still another part of 
the Garden there is a labyrinthine maze formed of an 
intricacy of hedge-bordered walks, involving himself 
in which, a man might wander for hours inextricably 
within a circuit of only a few yards. It seemed to me 
a sad emblem of the mental and moral perplexities 
in which we sometimes go astray, petty in scope, yet 
large enough to entangle a lifetime, and bewilder ua 
with a weary movement, but no genuine progress. 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 63 

The Learn, — the " high eomplexioned Learn," as 
Drayton calls it, — after drowsing across the principal 
street of the town, beneath a handsome bridge, skirts 
along the margin of the Garden without any percepti- 
ble flow. Heretofore I had fancied the Concord the 
laziest river in the world, but now assign that amiable 
distinction to the little English stream. Its water is 
by no means transparent, but has a greenish, goose- 
puddly hue, which, however, accords well with the 
other coloring and characteristics of the scene, and is 
disagreeable neither to sight nor smell. Certainly, 
this river is a perfect feature of that gentle pictur- 
esqueness in which England is so rich, sleeping, as it 
does, beneath a margin of willows that droop into its 
bosom, and other trees, of deeper verdure than our 
own country can boast, inclining lovingly over it. On 
the Garden-side it is bordered by a shadowy, secluded 
grove, with winding paths among its boskiness, afford- 
ing many a peep at the river's imperceptible lapse and 
tranquil gleam ; and on the opposite shore stands the 
priory-church, with its churchyard full of shrubbery 
and tombstones. 

The business portion of the town clusters about the 
banks of the Learn, and is naturally densest around 
the well to which the modern settlement owes its exist- 
ence. Here are the commercial inns, the post-office, 
the furniture - dealers, the iron - mongers, and all the 
heavy and homely establishments that connect them- 
selves even with the airiest modes of human life ; 
while upward from the river, by a long and gentle as- 
cent, rises the principal street, which is very bright 
and cheerful in its physiognomy, and adorned with 
shop-fronts almost as splendid as those of London, 
though on a diminutive scale. There are likewise 



04 LEAMINGTON SPA. 

side-streets and cross-streets, many of which are bor- 
dered with the beautiful Warwickshire elm, a most 
unusual kind of adornment for an English town ; and 
spacious avenues, wide enough to afford room for 
stately groves, with foot-paths running beneath the 
lofty shade, and rooks cawing and chattering so high 
in the tree-tops that their voices get musical before 
reaching the earth. The houses are mostly built in 
blocks and ranges, in which every separate tenement 
is a repetition of its fellow, though the architecture of 
the different ranges is sufficiently various. Some of 
them are almost palatial in size and sumptuousness 
of arrangement. Then, on the outskirts of the town, 
there are detached villas, enclosed within that sepa- 
rate domain of high stone fence and embowered shrub- 
bery which an Englishman so loves to build and plant 
around his abode, presenting to the public only an 
iron gate, with a gravelled carriage - drive winding 
away towards the half-hidden mansion. Whether in 
street or suburb, Leamington may fairly be called 
beautiful, and, at some points, magnificent ; but by 
and by you become doubtfully suspicious of a some- 
what unreal finery : it is pretentious, though not glar- 
ingly so ; it has been built with malice aforethought, 
as a place of gentility and enjoyment. Moreover, 
splendid as the houses look, and comfortable as they 
often are, there is a nameless something about them, 
betokening that they have not grown out of human 
hearts, but are the creations of a skilfully applied hu- 
man intellect: no man has reared any one of them, 
whether stately or humble, to be his life-long resi- 
dence, wherein to bring up his children, who are to 
inherit it as a home. They are nicely contrived 
lodging-houses, one and all, — the best as well as the 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 65 

shabbiest of them, — and therefore inevitably lack 
some nameless property that a home should have. 
This was the case with our own little snuggery in 
Lansdowne Circus, as with all the rest; it had not 
grown out of anybody's individual need, but was built 
to let or sell, and was therefore like a ready-made gar- 
ment, — a tolerable fit, but only tolerable. 

All these blocks, ranges, and detached villas are 
adorned with the finest and most aristocratic names 
that I have found anywhere in England, except per- 
haps, in Bath, which is the great metropolis of that 
second-class gentility with which watering - places are 
chiefly populated. Lansdowne Crescent, Lansdowne 
Circus, Lansdowne Terrace, Regent Street, Warwick 
Street, Clarendon Street, the Upper and Lower Par- 
ade : such are a few of the designations. Parade, in- 
deed, is a well-chosen name for the principal street, 
along which the population of the idle town draws 
itself out for daily review and display. I only wish 
that my descriptive powers would enable me to throw 
off a picture of the scene at a sunny noontide, individ- 
ualizing each character with a touch ; the great peo- 
ple alighting from their carriages at the principal 
shop-doors ; the elderly ladies and infirm Indian offi- 
cers drawn along in Bath-chairs ; the comely, rather 
than pretty, English girls, with their deep, healthy 
bloom, which an American taste is apt to deem fitter 
for a milkmaid than for a lady ; the mustached gentle- 
men with frogged surtouts and a military air ; the 
nursemaids and chubby children, but no chubbier than 
our own, and scampering on slenderer legs ; the sturdy 
figure of John Bull in all varieties and of all ages, but 
ever with the stamp of authenticity somewhere about 
him. 



66 LEAMINGTON SPA. 

To say the truth, I have been holding the pen over 
my paper, purposing to write a descriptive paragraph 
or two about the throng on the principal Parade of 
Leamington, so arranging it as to present a sketch of 
the British out-of-door aspect on a morning walk of 
gentility ; but I find no personages quite sufficiently 
distinct and individual in my memory to supply the 
materials of such a panorama, Oddly enough, the only 
figure that comes fairly forth to my mind's eye is that 
of a dowager, one of hundreds whom I used to marvel 
at, all over England, but who have scarcely a represen- 
tative among our own ladies of autumnal life, so thin, 
careworn, and frail, as age usually makes the latter. 

I have heard a good deal of the tenacity with which 
English ladies retain their personal beauty to a late 
period of life ; but (not to suggest that an American 
eye needs use and cultivation before it can quite ap- 
preciate the charm of English beauty at any age) it 
strikes me that an English lady of fifty is apt to be- 
come a creature less refined and delicate, so far as her 
physique goes, than anything that we Western people 
class under the name of woman. She has an awful 
ponderosity of frame, not pulpy, like the looser devel- 
opment of our few fat women, but massive with solid 
beef and streaky tallow ; so that (though struggling 
manfully against the idea) you inevitably think of her 
as made up of steaks and sirloins. When she walks, 
her advance is elephantine. When she sits down, it 
is on a great round space of her Maker's footstool, 
where she looks as if nothing could ever move her. 
She imposes awe and respect by the muchness of her 
personality, to such a degree that you probably credit 
her with far greater moral and intellectual force than 
she can fairly claim. Her visage is usually grim and 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 67 

stern, seldom positively forbidding, yet calmly terri- 
ble, not merely by its breadth and weight of feature, 
but because it seems to express so much well-founded 
self-reliance, such acquaintance with the world, its 
toils, troubles, and dangers, and such sturdy capacity 
for trampling down a foe. Without anything posi= 
tively salient, or actively offensive, or, indeed, unjustly 
formidable to her neighbors, she has the effect of a 
seventy-four gun-ship in time of peace ; for, while you 
assure yourself that there is no real danger, you can- 
not help thinking how tremendous would be her onset 
if pugnaciously inclined, and how futile the effort to 
inflict any counter- injury. She certainly looks ten- 
fold — nay, a hundred-fold — better able to take care 
of herself than our slender-framed and haggard wo- 
mankind; but I have not found reason to suppose 
that the English dowager of fifty has actually greater 
courage, fortitude, and strength of character than our 
women of similar age, or even a tougher physical en- 
durance than they. Morally, she is strong, I suspect, 
only in society, and in the common routine of social 
affairs, and would be found powerless and timid in 
any exceptional strait that might call for energy out- 
side of the conventionalities amid which she has grown 
up. 

You can meet this figure in the street, and live, 
and even smile at the recollection. But conceive of 
her in a ball-room, with the bare, brawny arms that 
she invariably displays there, and all the other cor- 
responding development, such as is beautiful in the 
maiden blossom, but a spectacle to howl at in such an 
over-blown cabbage-rose as this. 

Yet, somewhere in this enormous bulk there must 
be hidden the modest;, slender, violet-nature of a girl, 



68 LEAMINGTON SPA. 

whom an alien mass of earthliness has unkindly over- 
grown ; for an English maiden in her teens, though 
very seldom so pretty as our own damsels, possesses, 
to say the truth, a certain charm of half - blossom, 
and delicately folded leaves, and tender womanhood 
shielded by maidenly reserves, with which, somehow 
or other, our American girls often fail to adorn them 
selves during an appreciable moment. It is a pity 
that the English violet should grow into such an out- 
rageously developed peony as I have attempted to de- 
scribe. I wonder whether a middle - aged husband 
ought to be considered as legally married to all the 
accretions that have overgrown the slenderness of his 
bride, since he led her to the altar, and which make 
her so much more than he ever bargained for! Is it 
not a sounder view of the case, that the matrimonial 
bond cannot be held to include the three fourths of 
the wife that had no existence when the ceremony was 
performed ? And as a matter of conscience and good 
morals, ought not an English married pair to insist 
upon the celebration of a silver- wedding at the end of 
twenty -five years, in order to legalize and mutually 
appropriate that corporeal growth of which both par- 
ties have individually come into possession since they 
were pronounced one flesh ? 

The chief enjoyment of my several visits to Leam- 
ington lay in rural walks about the neighborhood, and 
in jaunts to places of note and interest, which are par- 
ticularly abundant in that region. The high-roads are 
made pleasant to the traveller by a border of trees, 
and often afford him the hospitality of a wayside 
bench beneath a comfortable shade. But a fresher 
delight is to be found in the foot-paths, which go wan- 
dering away from stile to stile, along hedges, and 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 69 

across broad fields, and through wooded parks, lead- 
ing you to little hamlets of thatched cottages, ancient, 
solitary farm - houses, picturesque old mills, stream- 
lets, pools, and all those quiet, secret, unexpected, yet 
strangely familiar features of English scenery that 
Tennyson shows us in his idyls and eclogues. These 
by-paths admit the wayfarer into the very heart of 
rural life, and yet do not burden him with a sense of 
intrusiveness. He has a right to go whithersoever 
they lead him ; for, with all their shaded privacy, they 
are as much the property of the public as the dusty 
high-road itself, and even by an older tenure. Their 
antiquity probably exceeds that of the Roman ways ; 
the footsteps of the aboriginal Britons first wore away 
the grass, and the natural flow of intercourse between 
village and village has kept the track bare ever since. 
An American farmer would plough across any such 
path, and obliterate it with his hills of potatoes and 
Indian corn ; but here it is protected by law, and still 
more by the sacredness that inevitably springs up, in 
this soil, along the well-defined footprints of centuries. 
Old associations are sure to be fragrant herbs in Eng- 
lish nostrils , we pull them up as weeds. 

I remember such a path, the access to which is from 
Lovers' Grove, a range of tall old oaks and elms on 
a high hill-top, whence there is a view of Warwick 
Castle, and a wide extent of landscape, beautiful, 
though bedimmed with English mist. This particular 
foot-path, however, is not a remarkably good specimen 
of its kind, since it leads into no hollows and seclu- 
sions, and soon terminates in a high-road. It con- 
nects Leamington by a short cut with the small neigh- 
boring village of Lillington, a place which impresses 
an American observer with its many points of contrast 



70 LEAMINGTON SPA. 

to the rural aspects of his own country. The village 
consists chiefly of one row of contiguous dwellings, 
separated only by party-walls, but ill-matched among 
themselves, being of different heights, and apparently 
of various ages, though all are of an antiquity which 
we should call venerable. Some of the windows are 
leaden - framed lattices opening on hinges. These 
houses are mostly built of gray stone ; but others, in 
the same range, are of brick, and one or two are in a 
very old fashion, — Elizabethan, or still older, — hav- 
ing a ponderous frame-work of oak, painted black, and 
filled in with plastered stone or bricks. Judging by 
the patches of repair, the oak seems to be the more 
durable part of the structure. Some of the roofs are 
covered with earthen tiles ; others (more decayed and 
poverty-stricken) with thatch, out of which sprouts a 
luxurious vegetation of grass, house-leeks, and yellow 
flowers. What especially strikes an American is the 
lack of that insulated space, the intervening gardens, 
grass - plots, orchards, broad - spreading shade - trees, 
which occur between our own village-houses. These 
English dwellings have no such separate surroundings ; 
they all grow together, like the cells of a honeycomb. 

Beyond the first row of houses, and hidden from it 
by a turn of the road, there was another row (or block, 
as we should call it) of small old cottages, stuck one 
against another, with their thatched roofs forming a 
single contiguity. These, I presume, were the habita- 
tions of the poorest order of rustic laborers ; and the 
narrow precincts of each cottage, as well as the close 
neighborhood of the whole, gave the impression of a 
stifled, unhealthy atmosphere among the occupants. 
It seemed impossible that there should be a cleanly 
reserve, a proper self-respect among individuals, or a 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 71 

wholesome unfamiliarity between families where hu- 
man life was crowded and massed into such intimate 
communities as these. Nevertheless, not to look be- 
yond the outside, I never saw a prettier rural scene 
than was presented by this range of contiguous huts. 
For in front of the whole row was a luxuriant and well- 
trimmed hawthorn hedge, and belonging to each cot- 
tage was a little square of garden-ground, separated 
from its neighbors by a line of the same verdant fence. 
The gardens were chockfull, not of esculent vegeta- 
bles, but of flowers, familiar ones, but very bright-col- 
ored, and shrubs of box, some of which were trimmed 
into artistic shapes ; and I remember, before one door, 
a representation of Warwick Castle, made of oyster- 
shells. The cottagers evidently loved the little nests 
in which they dwelt, and did their best to make them 
beautiful, and succeeded more than tolerably well, — 
so kindly did nature help their humble efforts with its 
verdure, flowers, moss, lichens, and the green things 
that grew out of the thatch. Through some of the 
open doorways we saw plump children rolling about 
on the stone floors, and their mothers, by no means 
very pretty, but as happy-looking as mothers generally 
are ; and while we gazed at these domestic matters an 
old woman rushed wildly out of one of the gates, up- 
holding a shovel, on which she clanged and clattered 
with a key. At first we fancied that she intended an 
onslaught against ourselves, but soon discovered that 
a more dangerous enemy was abroad; for the old 
lady's bees had swarmed, and the air was full of them, 
whizzing by our heads like bullets. 

Not far from these two rows of houses and cottages, 
a green lane, overshadowed with trees, turned aside 
from the main road, and tended towards a square, 



72 LEAMINGTON SPA. 

gray tower, the battlements of which were just high 
enough to be visible above the foliage. Wending our 
way thitherward, we found the very picture and ideal 
of a country church and churchyard. The tower 
seemed to be of Norman architecture, low, massive, 
and crowned with battlements. The body of the 
church was of very modest dimensions, and the eaves 
so low that I could touch them with my walking-stick. 
We looked into the windows and beheld the dim and 
quiet interior, a narrow space, but venerable with the 
consecration of many centuries, and keeping its sanc- 
tity as entire and inviolate as that of a vast cathedral. 
The nave was divided from the side aisles of the 
church by pointed arches resting on very sturdy pil- 
lars : it was good to see how solemnly they held them- 
selves to their age-long task of supporting that lowly 
roof. There was a small organ, suited in size to the 
vaulted hollow, which it weekly filled with religious 
sound. On the opposite wall of the church, between 
two windows, was a mural tablet of white marble, with 
an inscription in black letters, — the only such me- 
morial that I could discern, although many dead peo- 
ple doubtless lay beneath the floor, and had paved it 
with their ancient tombstones, as is customary in old 
English churches. There were no modern painted win- 
dows, flaring with raw colors, nor other gorgeous adorn- 
ments, such as the present taste for mediaeval restora- 
tion often patches upon the decorous simplicity of the 
gray village-church. It is probably the worshipping- 
place of no more distinguished a congregation than the 
farmers and peasantry who inhabit the houses and cot- 
tages which I have just described. Had the lord of 
the manor been one of the parishioners, there would 
have been an eminent pew near the chancel, walled 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 73 

high about, curtained, and softly cushioned, warmed 
by a fireplace of its own, and distinguished by hered- 
itary tablets and escutcheons on the enclosed stone 
pillar. 

A well-trodden path led across the churchyard, and 
the gate being on the latch, we entered, and walked 
round among the graves and monuments. The latter 
were chiefly head-stones, none of which were very old, 
so far as was discoverable by the dates ; some, indeed, 
in so ancient a cemetery, were disagreeably new, with 
inscriptions glittering like sunshine in gold letters. 
The ground must have been dug over and over again, 
innumerable times, until the soil is made up of what 
was once human clay, out of which have sprung suc- 
cessive crops of gravestones, that flourish their allotted 
time, and disappear, like the weeds and flowers in their 
briefer period. The English climate is very unfavor- 
able to the endurance of memorials in the open air. 
Twenty years of it suffice to give as much antiquity of 
aspect, whether to tombstone or edifice, as a hundred 
years of our own drier atmosphere, — so soon do the 
drizzly rains and constant moisture corrode the sur- 
face of marble or freestone. Sculptured edges lose 
their sharpness in a year or two ; yellow lichens over- 
spread a beloved name, and obliterate it while it is 
yet fresh upon some survivor's heart. Time gnaws an 
English gravestone with wonderful appetite ; and when 
the inscription is quite illegible, the sexton takes the 
useless slab away, and perhaps makes a hearthstone of 
it, and digs up the unripe bones which it ineffectually 
tried to memorialize, and gives the bed to another 
sleeper. In the Charter Street burial-ground at 
Salem, and in the old graveyard on the hill at Ips- 
wich, I have seen more ancient gravestones, with legi- 



74 LEAMINGTON SPA. 

ble inscriptions on them, than in any English church- 
yard. 

And yet this same ungenial climate, hostile as it 
generally is to the long remembrance of departed peo- 
ple, has sometimes a lovely way of dealing with the 
records on certain monuments that lie horizontally in 
the open air. The rain falls into the deep incisions of 
the letters, and has scarcely time to be dried away be- 
fore another shower sprinkles the flat stone again, and 
replenishes those little reservoirs. The unseen, myste- 
rious seeds of mosses find their way into the lettered 
furrows, and are made to germinate by the continual 
moisture and watery sunshine of the English sky ; and 
by and by, in a year, or two years, or many years, be- 
hold the complete inscription — 

Jfew fLgetfj tfje Botjg, 

and all the rest of the tender falsehood — beautifully 
embossed in raised letters of living green, a bas-relief 
of velvet moss on the marble slab ! It becomes more 
legible, under the skyey influences, after the world has 
forgotten the deceased, than when it was fresh from 
the stone-cutter's hands. It outlives the grief of 
friends. I first saw an example of this in Bebbington 
churchyard, in Cheshire, and thought, that Nature 
must needs have had a special tenderness for the per- 
son (no noted man, however, in the world's history) 
so long ago laid beneath that stone, since she took 
such wonderful pains to " keep his memory green." 
Perhaps the proverbial phrase just quoted may have 
had its origin in the natural phenomenon here de- 
scribed. 

While we rested ourselves on a horizontal monu- 
ment, which was elevated just high enough to be a 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 75 

convenient seat, I observed that one of the grave- 
stones lay very close to the church, — so close that 
the droppings of the eaves would fall upon it. It 
seemed as if the inmate of that grave had desired to 
creep under the church- wall. On closer inspection, we 
found an almost illegible epitaph on the stone, and 
with difficulty made out this forlorn verse : — 

** Poorly lived, 
And poorly died, 
Poorly buried, 
And no one cried." 

It would be hard to compress the story of a cold and 
luckless life, death, and burial into fewer words, or 
more impressive ones ; at least, we found them im- 
pressive, perhaps because we had to re-create the in- 
scription by scraping away the lichens from the faintly 
traced letters. The grave was on the shady and damp 
side of the church, endwise towards it, the head-stone 
being within about three feet of the foundation-wall ; 
so that, unless the poor man was a dwarf, he must 
have been doubled up to fit him into his final resting- 
place. No wonder that his epitaph murmured against 
so poor a burial as this ! His name, as well as I could 
make it out, was Treeo, — John Treeo, I think, — and 
he died in 1810, at the age of seventy-four. The 
gravestone is so overgrown with grass and weeds, so 
covered with unsightly lichens, and so crumbly with 
time and foul weather, that it is questionable whether 
anybody will ever be at the trouble of deciphering it 
again. But there is a quaint and sad kind of enjoy- 
ment in defeating (to such slight degree as my pen 
may do it) the probabilities of oblivion for poor John 
Treeo, and asking a little sympathy for him, half a 
century after his death, and making him better and 



76 LEAMINGTON SPA. 

more widely known, at least, than any other slura- 
berer in Lillington churchyard : he having been, as 
appearances go, the outcast of them all. 

You find similar old churches and villages in all the 
neighboring country, at the distance of every two or 
three miles ; and I describe them, not as being rare, 
but because they are so common and characteristic. 
The village of Whitnash, within twenty minutes' walk 
of Leamington, looks as secluded, as rural, and as lit- 
tle disturbed by the fashions of to-day, as if Dr. Jeph- 
son had never developed all those Parades and Cres- 
cents out of his magic well. I used to wonder whether 
the inhabitants had ever yet heard of railways, or, at 
their slow rate of progress, had even reached the epoch 
of stage-coaches. As you approach the village, while 
it is yet unseen, you observe a tall, overshadowing 
canopy of elm-tree tops, beneath which you almost 
hesitate to follow the public road, on account of the 
remoteness that seems to exist between the precincts 
of this old-world community and the thronged modern 
street out of which you have so recently emerged. 
Venturing onward, however, you soon find yourself 
in the heart of Whitnash, and see an irregular ring of 
ancient rustic dwellings surrounding the village-green, 
on one side of which stands the church, with its square 
Norman tower and battlements, while close adjoining 
is the vicarage, made picturesque by peaks and gables. 
At first glimpse, none of the houses appear to be less 
than two or three centuries old, and they are of the 
ancient, wooden-framed fashion, with thatched roofs, 
which give them the air of birds' nests, thereby assim- 
ilating them closely to the simplicity of nature. 

The church-tower is mossy and much gnawed by 
time ; it has narrow loopholes up and down its front 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 77 

and sides, and an arched window over the low portal, 
set with small panes of glass, cracked, dim, and irregu- 
lar, through which a by-gone age is peeping out into the 
day-light. Some of those old, grotesque faces, called 
gargoyles, are seen on the projections of the architect- 
ure. The churchyard is very small, and is encom- 
passed by a gray stone fence that looks as ancient as 
the church itself. In front of the tower, on the village- 
green, is a yew-tree of incalculable age, with a vast cir- 
cumference of trunk, but a very scanty head of foli- 
age ; though its boughs still keep some of the vitality 
which, perhaps, was in its early prime when the Saxon 
invaders founded Whitnash. A thousand years is no 
extraordinary antiquity in the lifetime of a yew. We 
were pleasantly startled, however, by discovering an 
exuberance of more youthful life than we had thought 
possible in so old a tree ; for the faces of two children 
laughed at us out of an opening in the trunk, which 
had become hollow with long decay. On one side of 
the yew stood a framework of worm-eaten timber, the 
use and meaning of which puzzled me exceedingly, till 
I made it out to be the village-stocks ; a public institu- 
tion that, in its day, had doubtless hampered many a 
pair of shank-bones, now crumbling in the adjacent 
churchyard. It is not to be supposed, however, that 
this old-fashioned mode of punishment is still in vogue 
among the good people of Whitnash. The vicar of 
the parish has antiquarian propensities, and had prob- 
ably dragged the stocks out of some dusty hiding- 
place and set them up on the former site as a curi- 
osity. 

I disquiet myself in vain with the effort to hit upon 
some characteristic feature, or assemblage of features, 
that shall convey to the reader the influence of hoar 



78 LEAMINGTON SPA. 

antiquity lingering into the present daylight, as I so 
often felt it in these old English scenes. It is only 
an American who can feel it ; and even he begins to 
find himself growing insensible to its effect, after a 
long residence in England. But while you are still 
new in the old country, it thrills you with strange 
emotion to think that this little church of Whitnash, 
humble as it seems, stood for ages under the Catholic 
faith, and has not materially changed since Wick- 
liffe's days, and that it looked as gray as now in 
Bloody Mary's time, and that Cromwell's troopers 
broke off the stone noses of those same gargoyles that 
are now grinning in your face. So, too, with the im- 
memorial yew-tree ; you see its great roots grasping 
hold of the earth like gigantic claws, clinging so stur- 
dily that no effort of time can wrench them away ; and 
there being life in the old tree, you feel all the more 
as if a contemporary witness were telling you of the 
things that have been. It has lived among men, and 
been a familiar object to them, and seen them brought 
to be christened and married and buried m the neigh- 
boring church and churchyard, through so many cen- 
turies, that it knows all about our race, so far as fifty 
generations of the Whitnash people can supply such 
knowledge. 

And, after all, what a weary life it must have been 
for the old tree ! Tedious beyond imagination ! Such, 
I think, is the final impression on the mind of an 
American visitor, when his delight at finding some- 
thing permanent begins to yield to his Western love 
of change, and he becomes sensible of the heavy air 
of a spot where the forefathers and forem others have 
grown up together, intermarried, and died, through a 
long succession of lives, without any intermixture of 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 79 

new elements, till family features and character are all 
run in the same inevitable mould. Life is there fos- 
silized in its greenest leaf. The man who died yester- 
day or ever so long ago walks the village-street to-day, 
and chooses the same wife that he married a hundred 
years since, and must be buried again to-morrow under 
the same kindred dust that has already covered him 
half a score of times. The stone threshold of his cot- 
tage is worn away with his hobnailed footsteps, shuf- 
fling over it from the reign of the first Plantagenet to 
that of Victoria. Better than this is the lot of our 
restless countrymen, whose modern instinct bids them 
tend always towards " fresh woods and pastures new." 
Eather than such monotony of sluggish ages, loitering 
on a village-green, toiling in hereditary fields, listen- 
ing to the parson's drone lengthened through centuries 
in the gray Norman church, let us welcome whatever 
change may come, — change of place, social customs, 
political institutions, modes of worship, — trusting 
that, if all present things shall vanish, they will but 
make room for better systems, and for a higher type 
of man to clothe his life in them, and to fling them 
off in turn. 

Nevertheless, while an American willingly accepts 
growth and change as the law of his own national and 
private existence, he has a singular tenderness for the 
stone-incrusted institutions of the mother-country. The 
reason may be (though I should prefer a more gener- 
ous explanation) that he recognizes the tendency of 
these hardened forms to stiffen her joints and fetter 
her ankles, in the race and rivalry of improvement. 
I hated to see so much as a twig of ivy wrenched away 
from an old wall in England. Yet change is at work, 
even in such a village as Whitnash. At a subsequent 



80 LEAMINGTON SPA. 

visit, looking more critically at the irregular circle of 
dwellings that surround the yew-tree and confront the 
church, I perceived that some of the houses must have 
been built within no long time, although the thatch, 
the quaint gables, and the old oaken framework of the 
others diffused an air of antiquity over the whole as- 
semblage. The church itself was undergoing repair 
and restoration, which is but another name for change. 
Masons were making patch-work on the front of the 
tower, and were sawing a slab of stone and piling up 
bricks to strengthen the side-wall, or possibly to en- 
large the ancient edifice by an additional aisle. More- 
over, they had dug an immense pit in the churchyard, 
long and broad, and fifteen feet deep, two thirds of 
which profundity were discolored by human decay, 
and mixed up with crumbly bones. What this exca- 
vation was intended for I could nowise imagine, unless 
it were the very pit in which Longfellow bids the 
" Dead Past bury its dead," and Whitnash, of all 
places in the world, were going to avail itself of our 
poet's suggestion. If so, it must needs be confessed 
that many picturesque and delightful things would be 
thrown into the hole, and covered out of sight forever. 
The article which I am writing has taken its own 
course, and occupied itself almost wholly with country 
churches; whereas I had purposed to attempt a de- 
scription of some of the many old towns — Warwick, 
Coventry, Kenilworth, Stratford -on -Avon — which 
lie within an easy scope of Leamington. And still an- 
other church presents itself to my remembrance. It 
is that of Hatton, on which I stumbled in the course 
of a forenoon's ramble, and paused a little while to 
look at it for the sake of old Dr. Parr, who was once 
its vicar. Hatton, so far as I could discover, has no 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 81 

public-house, no shop, no contiguity of roofs (as in 
most English villages, however small), but is merely 
an ancient neighborhood of farm-houses, spacious, and 
standing wide apart, each within its own precincts, and 
offering a most comfortable aspect of orchards, harvest- 
fields, barns, stacks, and all manner of rural plenty. 
It seemed to be a community of old settlers, among 
whom everything had been going on prosperously since 
an epoch beyond the memory of man ; and they kept 
a certain privacy among themselves, and dwelt on a 
cross-road, at the entrance of which was a barred gate, 
hospitably open, but still impressing me with a sense 
of scarcely warrantable intrusion. After all, in some 
shady nook of those gentle Warwickshire slopes, there 
may have been a denser and more populous settlement 
styled Hatton, which I never reached. 

Emerging from the by-road, and entering upon one 
that crossed it at right angles and led to Warwick, I 
espied the church of Dr. Parr. Like the others which 
I have described, it had a low stone tower, square, 
and battlemented at its summit : for all these little 
churches seem to have been built on the same model, 
and nearly at the same measurement, and have even a 
greater family-likeness than the cathedrals. As I ap- 
proached, the bell of the tower (a remarkably deep- 
toned bell, considering how small it was) flung its 
voice abroad, and told me that it was noon. The 
church stands among its graves, a little removed from 
the wayside, quite apart from any collection of houses, 
and with no signs of a vicarage ; it is a good deal 
shadowed by trees, and not wholly destitute of ivy. 
The body of the edifice, unfortunately (and it is an 
outrage which the English churchwardens are fond of 
perpetrating), has been newly covered with a yellowish 

VOL. VII. 6 



82 LEAMINGTON SPA. 

plaster or wash, so as quite to destroy the aspect of 
antiquity, except upon the tower, which wears the dark 
gray hue of many centuries. The chancel-window is 
painted with a representation of Christ upon the Cross, 
and all the other windows are full of painted or stained 
glass, but none of it ancient, nor (if it be fair to judge 
from without of what ought to be seen within) pos- 
sessing any of the tender glory that should be the in- 
heritance of this branch of Art, revived from mediaeval 
times. I stepped over the graves, and peeped in at 
two or three of the windows, and saw the snug interior 
of the church glimmering through the many-colored 
panes, like a show of commonplace objects under the 
fantastic influence of a dream : for the floor was cov- 
ered with modern pews, very like what we may see in 
a New England meeting-house, though, I think, a lit- 
tle more favorable than those would be to the quiet 
slumbers of the Hatton farmers and their families. 
Those who slept under Dr. Parr's preaching now pro- 
long their nap, I suppose, in the churchyard round 
about, and can scarcely have drawn much spiritual 
benefit from any truths that he contrived to tell them 
in their lifetime. It struck me as a rare example 
(even where examples are numerous) of a man utterly 
misplaced, that this enormous scholar, great in the 
classic tongues, and inevitably converting his own 
simplest vernacular into a learned language, should 
have been set up in this homely pulpit, and ordained 
to preach salvation to a rustic audience, to whom it is 
difficult to imagine how he could ever have spoken one 
available word. 

Almost always, in visiting such scenes as I have 
been attempting to describe, I had a singular sense of 
having been there before. The ivy-grown English 



LEAMINGTON SPA. 83 

churches (even that of Bebbington, the first that I 
beheld) were quite as familiar to me, when fresh from 
home, as the old wooden meeting-house in Salem, 
which used, on wintry Sabbaths, to be the frozen pur- 
gatory of my childhood. This was a bewildering, yet 
very delightful emotion fluttering about me like a 
faint summer wind, and filling my imagination with a 
thousand half-remembrances, which looked as vivid as 
sunshine at a side-glance, but faded quite away when- 
ever I attempted to grasp and define them. Of course, 
the explanation of the mystery was, that history, poe- 
try, and fiction, books of travel, and the talk of tour- 
ists, had given me pretty accurate preconceptions of 
the common objects of English sceneiy, and these, be- 
ing long ago vivified by a youthful fancy, had insen- 
sibly taken their places among the images of things 
actually seen. Yet the illusion was often so powerful, 
that I almost doubted whether such airy remembrances 
might not be a sort of innate idea, the print of a rec- 
ollection in some ancestral mind, transmitted, with 
fainter and fainter impress through several descents, 
to my own. I felt, indeed, like the stalwart progeni- 
tor in person, returning to the hereditary haunts after 
more than two hundred years, and finding the church, 
the hall, the farm-house, the cottage, hardly changed 
during his long absence, — the same shady by-paths 
and hedge-lanes, the same veiled sky, and green lustre 
of the lawns and fields, — while his own affinities for 
these things, a little obscured by disuse, were reviving 
at every step. 

An American is not very apt to love the English 
people, as a whole, on whatever length of acquain- 
tance. I fancy that they would value our regard, and 
even reciprocate it in their ungracious way, if we could 



84 LEAMINGTON SPA. 

give it to them in spite of all rebuffs; but they are 
beset by a curious and inevitable infelicity, which 
compels them, as it were, to keep up what they seem 
to consider a wholesome bitterness of feeling between 
themselves and all other nationalities, especially that 
of America. They will never confess it ; nevertheless, 
it is as essential a tonic to them as their bitter ale. 
Therefore, — and possibly, too, from a similar narrow- 
ness in his own character, — an American seldom 
feels quite as if he were at home among the English 
people. If he do so, he has ceased to be an American. 
But it requires no long residence to make him love 
their island, and appreciate it as thoroughly as they 
themselves do. For my part, I used to wish that we 
could annex it, transferring their thirty millions of in- 
habitants to some convenient wilderness in the great 
West, and putting half or a quarter as many of our- 
selves into their places. The change wOuld be bene- 
ficial to both parties. We, in our dry atmosphere, 
are getting too nervous, haggard, dyspeptic, extenu- 
ated, unsubstantial, theoretic, and need to be made 
grosser. John Bull, on the other hand, has grown 
bulbous, long-bodied, short-legged, heavy-witted, ma- 
terial, and, in a word, too intensely English. In a few 
more centuries he will be the earthliest creature that 
ever the earth saw. Heretofore Providence has ob- 
viated such a result by timely intermixtures of alien 
races with the old English stock ; so that each succes- 
sive conquest of England has proved a victory by the 
revivification and improvement of its native manhood. 
Cannot America and England hit upon some scheme 
to secure even greater advantages to both nations ? 



ABOUT WARWICK. 

Between bright, new Leamington, the growth of 
the present century, and rusty Warwick, founded by 
King Cymbeline in the twilight ages, a thousand years 
before the mediaeval darkness, there are two roads, 
either of which may be measured by a sober-paced pe- 
destrian in less than half an hour. 

One of these avenues flows out of the midst of the 
smart parades and crescents of the former town, — 
along by hedges and beneath the shadow of great elms, 
past stuccoed Elizabethan villas and wayside alehouses, 
and through a hamlet of modern aspect, — and runs 
straight into the principal thoroughfare of Warwick. 
The battlemented turrets of the castle, embowered 
half-way up in foliage, and the tall, slender tower of 
St. Mary's Church, rising from among clustered roofs, 
have been visible almost from the commencement of 
the walk. Near the entrance of the town stands St. 
John's School-House, a picturesque old edifice of stone, 
with four peaked gables in a row, alternately plain 
and ornamented, and wide, projecting windows, and a 
spacious and venerable porch, all overgrown with moss 
and ivy, and shut in from the world by a high stone 
fence, not less mossy than the gabled front. There is 
an iron gate, through the rusty open-work of which 
you see a grassy lawn, and almost expect to meet the 
shy, curious eyes of the little boys of past generations, 
peeping forth from their infantile antiquity into the 
strangeness of our present life. I find a peculiar 



86 ABOUT WARWICK. 

charm m these long-established English schools, where 
the school-boy of to-day sits side by side, as it were, 
with his great-grandsire, on the same old benches, and 
often, I believe, thumbs a later, but unimproved edi- 
tion of the same old grammar or arithmetic. The 
new-fangled notions of a Yankee school - committee 
would madden many a pedagogue, and shake down 
the roof of many a time-honored seat of learning, in 
the mother-country. 

At this point, however, we will turn back, in order 
to follow up the other road from Leamington, which 
was the one that I loved best to take. It pursues a 
straight and level course, bordered by wide gravel- 
walks and overhung by the frequent elm, with here a 
cottage and there a villa ; on one side a wooden plan- 
tation, and on the other a rich field of grass or grain ; 
until, turning at right angles, it brings you to an 
arched bridge over the Avon. Its parapet is a balus- 
trade carved out of freestone, into the soft substance 
of which a multitude of persons have engraved their 
names or initials, many of them now illegible, while 
others, more deeply cut, are illuminated with fresh 
green moss. These tokens indicate a famous spot ; 
and casting our eyes along the smooth gleam and 
shadow of the quiet stream, through a vista of willows 
that droop on either side into the water, we behold the 
gray magnificence of Warwick Castle, uplifting itself 
among stately trees, and rearing its turrets high above 
their loftiest branches. We can scarcely think the 
scene real, so completely do those machicolated towers, 
the long line of battlements, the massive buttresses, 
the high-windowed walls, shape out our indistinct ideas 
of the antique time. It might rather seem as if the 
sleepy river (being Shakespeare's Avon, and often, no 



ABOUT WARWICK. 87 

doubt, the mirror of his gorgeous visions) were dream- 
ing now of a lordly residence that stood here many 
centuries ago ; and this fantasy is strengthened, when 
you observe that the image in the tranquil water has 
all the distinctness of the actual structure. Either 
might be the reflection of the other. Wherever Time 
has gnawed one of the stones, you see the mark of his 
tooth just as plainly in the sunken reflection. Each 
is so perfect, that the upper vision seems a castle in 
the air, and the lower one an old stronghold of feu- 
dalism, miraculously kept from decay in an enchanted 
river. 

A ruinous and ivy-grown bridge, that projects from 
the bank a little on the hither side of the castle, has 
the effect of making the scene appear more entirely 
apart from the every-day world, for it ends abruptly in 
the middle of the stream, — so that, if a cavalcade of 
the knights and ladies of romance should issue from 
the old walls, they could never tread on earthly ground 
any more than we, approaching from the side of mod- 
ern realism, can overleap the gulf between our domain 
and theirs. Yet, if we seek to disenchant ourselves, 
it may readily be done. Crossing the bridge on which 
we stand, and passing a little farther on, we come to 
the entrance of the castle, abutting on the highway, 
and hospitably open at certain hours to all curious pil- 
grims who choose to disburse half a crown or so to- 
ward the support of the earl's domestics. The sight 
of that long series of historic rooms, full of such splen- 
dors and rarities as a great English family necessarily 
gathers about itself in its hereditary abode, and in the 
lapse of ages, is well worth the money, or ten times as 
much, if indeed the value of the spectacle could be 
reckoned in money's-worth. But after the attendant 



88 ABOUT WARWICK. 

has hurried you from end to end of the edifice, repeat- 
ing a guide-book by rote, and exorcising each succes- 
sive hall of its poetic glamour and witchcraft by the 
mere tone in which he talks about it, you will make 
the doleful discovery that Warwick Castle has ceased 
to be a dream. It is better, methinks, to linger on 
the bridge, gazing at Caesar's Tower and Guy's Tower, 
in the dim English sunshine above, and in the placid 
Avon below, and still keep them as thoughts in your 
own mind, than climb to their summits, or touch even 
a stone of their actual substance. They will have all 
the more reality for you, as stalwart relics of imme- 
morial time, if you are reverent enough to leave them 
in the intangible sanctity of a poetic vision. 

From the bridge over the Avon, the road passes in 
front of the castle-gate, and soon enters the principal 
street of Warwick, a little beyond St. John's School- 
House, already described. Chester itself, most antique 
of English towns, can hardly show quainter architec- 
tural shapes than many of the buildings that border 
this street. They are mostly of the timber-and-plaster 
kind, with bowed and decrepit ridge-poles, and a whole 
chronology of various patchwork in their walls ; their 
low-browed doorways open upon a sunken floor ; their 
projecting stories peep, as it were, over one another's 
shoulders, and rise into a multiplicity of peaked ga- 
bles ; they have curious windows, breaking out irreg- 
ularly all over the house, some even in the roof, set in 
their own little peaks, opening lattice-wise, and fur- 
nished with twenty small panes of lozenge-shaped glass. 
The architecture of these edifices (a visible oaken 
framework, showing the whole skeleton of the house, 
— as if a man's bones should be arranged on his out- 
side, and his flesh seen through the interstices) is 



ABOUT WARWICK. 89 

often imitated by modern builders, and with suffi- 
ciently picturesque effect. The objection is, that such 
houses, like all imitations of by-gone styles, have an air 
of affectation ; they do not seem to be built in earnest ; 
they are no better than playthings, or overgrown baby- 
houses, in which nobody should be expected to encoun- 
ter the serious realities of either birth or death. Be- 
sides, originating nothing, we leave no fashions for 
another age to copy, when we ourselves shall have 
grown antique. 

Old as it looks, all this portion of Warwick has 
over-brimmed, as it were, from the original settlement, 
being outside of the ancient wall. The street soon 
runs under an arched gateway, with a church or some 
other venerable structure above it, and admits us into 
the heart of the town. At one of my first visits, I 
witnessed a military display. A regiment of War- 
wickshire militia, probably commanded by the Earl, 
was going through its drill in the market-place ; and 
on the collar of one of the officers was embroidered 
the Bear and Ragged Staff, which has been the cogni- 
zance of the Warwick earldom from time immemorial. 
The soldiers were sturdy young men, with the simple, 
stolid, yet kindly, faces of English rustics, looking ex- 
ceedingly well in a body, but slouching into a yeoman- 
like carriage and appearance the moment they were 
dismissed from drill. Squads of them were distrib- 
uted everywhere about the streets, and sentinels were 
posted at various points ; and I saw a sergeant, with 
a great key in his hand (big enough to have been the 
key of the castle's main entrance when the gate was 
thickest and heaviest) apparently setting a guard. 
Thus, centuries after feudal times are past, we find 
warriors still gathering under the old castle-walls, and 



90 ABOUT WARWICK. 

commanded by a feudal lord, just as in the days of 
the King-Maker, who, no doubt, often mustered his 
retainers in the same market-place where I beheld this 
modern regiment. 

The interior of the town wears a less old-fashioned 
aspect than the suburbs through which we approach 
it ; and the High Street has shops with modern plate- 
glass, and buildings with stuccoed fronts, exhibiting 
as few projections to hang a thought or sentiment 
upon as if an architect of to-day had planned them. 
And, indeed, so far as their surface goes, they are 
perhaps new enough to stand unabashed in an Ameri- 
can street ; but behind these renovated faces, with 
their monotonous lack of expression, there is probably 
the substance of the same old town that wore a Gothic 
exterior in the Middle Ages. The street is an emblem 
of England itself. What seems new in it is chiefly a 
skilful and fortunate adaptation of what such a peo- 
ple as ourselves would destroy. The new things are 
based and supported on sturdy old things, and derive 
a massive strength from their deep and immemorial 
foundations, though with such limitations and impedi- 
ments as only an Englishman could endure. But he 
likes to feel the weight of all the past upon his back ; 
and, moreover, the antiquity that overburdens him 
has taken root in his being, and has grown to be 
rather a hump than a pack, so that there is no getting 
rid of it without tearing his whole structure to pieces. 
In my judgment, as he appears to be sufficiently com- 
fortable under the mouldy accretion, he had better 
stumble on with it as long as he can. He presents a 
spectacle which is by no means without its charm for 
a disinterested and unencumbered observer. 

When the old edifice, or the antiquated custom 01 



ABOUT WARWICK. 91 

institution, appears in its pristine form, without any 
attempt at intermarrying it with modern fashions, an 
American cannot but admire the picturesque effect 
produced by the sudden cropping up of an apparently 
dead-and-buried state of society into the actual pres- 
ent, of which he is himself a part. We need not go 
far in Warwick without encountering an instance of 
the kind. Proceeding westward through the town, we 
find ourselves confronted by a huge mass of natural 
rock, hewn into something like architectural shape, 
and penetrated by a vaulted passage, which may well 
have been one of King Cymbeline's original gate- 
ways ; and on the top of the rock, over the archway, 
sits a small old church, communicating with an an- 
cient edifice, or assemblage of edifices, that look down 
from a similar elevation on the side of the street. A 
range of trees half hides the latter establishment from 
the sun. It presents a curious and venerable speci- 
men of the timber-and-plaster style of building, in 
which some of the finest old houses in England are 
constructed : the front projects into porticos and ves- 
tibules, and rises into many gables, some in a row, 
and others crowning semi-detached portions of the 
structure ; the windows mostly open on hinges, but 
show a delightful irregularity of shape and position ; a 
multiplicity of chimneys break through the roof at 
their own will, or, at least, without any settled pur- 
pose of the architect. The whole affair looks very 
old, — so old indeed that the front bulges forth, as if 
the timber frame-work were a little weary, at last, of 
standing erect so long ; but the state of repair is so 
perfect, and there is such an indescribable aspect of 
continuous vitality within the system of this aged 
house, that you feel confident that there may be safe 



92 ABOUT WARWICK. 

shelter yet, and perhaps for centuries to come, under 
its time-honored roof. And on a bench, sluggishly 
enjoying the sunshine, and looking into the street of 
Warwick as from a life apart, a few old men are gen- 
erally to be seen, wrapped in long cloaks, on which 
you may detect the glistening of a silver badge repre- 
senting the Bear and Ragged Staff. These decorated 
worthies are some of the twelve brethren of Leicester's 
Hospital, — a community which subsists to-day under 
the identical modes that were established for it in the 
reign of Queen Elizabeth, and of course retains many 
features of a social life that has vanished almost every- 
where else. 

The edifice itself dates from a much older period 
than the charitable institution of which it is now the 
home. It was the seat of a religious fraternity far 
back in the Middle Ages, and continued so till Henry 
VIII. turned all the priesthood of England out of 
doors, and put the most unscrupulous of his favorites 
into their vacant abodes. In many instances, the old 
monks had chosen the sites of their domiciles so well, 
and built them on such a broad system of beauty and 
convenience, that their lay-occupants found it easy to 
convert them into stately and comfortable homes; and 
as such they still exist, with something of the antique 
reverence lingering about them. The structure now 
before us seems to have been first granted to Sir 
Nicholas Lestrange, who perhaps intended, like other 
men, to establish his household gods in the niches 
whence he had thrown down the images of saints, and 
to lay his hearth where an altar had stood. But there 
was probably a natural reluctance in those days (when 
Catholicism, so lately repudiated, must needs have re- 
tained an influence over all but the most obdurate 



ABOUT WARWICK. 93 

characters) to bring one's hopes of domestic prosper- 
ity and a fortunate lineage into direct hostility with 
the awful claims of the ancient religion. At all events, 
there is still a superstitious idea, betwixt a fantasy and 
a belief, that the possession of former Church-property 
has drawn a curse along with it, not only among the 
posterity of those to whom it was originally granted, 
but wherever it has subsequently been transferred, 
even if honestly bought and paid for. There are fam- 
ilies, now inhabiting some of the beautiful old abbeys, 
who appear to indulge a species of pride in recording 
the strange deaths and ugly shapes of misfortune that 
have occurred among their predecessors, and may be 
supposed likely to dog their own pathway down the 
ages of futurity. Whether Sir Nicholas Lestrange, in 
the beef -eating days of Old Harry and Elizabeth, was 
a nervous man, and subject to apprehensions of this 
kind, I cannot tell; but it is certain that he speed- 
ily rid himself of the spoils of the Church, and that, 
within twenty years afterwards, the edifice became 
the property of the famous Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 
brother of the Earl of Warwick. He devoted the 
ancient religious precinct to a charitable use, endow- 
ing it with an ample revenue, and making it the per- 
petual home of twelve poor, honest, and war-broken 
soldiers, mostly his own retainers, and natives either 
of Warwickshire or Gloucestershire. These veterans, 
or others wonderfully like them, still occupy their 
monkish dormitories, and haunt the time - darkened 
corridors and galleries of the hospital, leading a life 
of old-fashioned comfort, wearing the old-fashioned 
cloaks, and burnishing the identical silver badges 
which the Earl of Leicester gave to the original twelve. 
He is said to have been a bad man in his day ; but he 



94 ABOUT WARWICK. 

has succeeded in prolonging one good deed into what 
was to him a distant future. 

On the projecting story, over the arched entrance, 
there is the date, 1571, and several coats - of - arms, 
either the Earl's or those of his kindred, and imme- 
diately above the doorway a stone sculpture of the 
Bear and Ragged Staff. 

Passing through the arch, we find ourselves in a 
quadrangle, or enclosed court, such as always formed 
the central part of a great family residence in Queen 
Elizabeth's time, and earlier. There can hardly be a 
more perfect specimen of such an establishment than 
Leicester's Hospital. The quadrangle is a sort of sky- 
roofed hall, to which there is convenient access from 
all parts of the house. The four inner fronts, with 
their high, steep roofs and sharp gables, look into it 
from antique windows, and through open corridors 
and galleries along the sides ; and there seems to be a 
richer display of architectural devices and ornaments, 
quainter carvings in oak, and more fantastic shapes 
of the timber framework, than on the side toward the 
street. On the wall opposite the arched entrance are 
the following inscriptions, comprising such moral 
rules, I presume, as were deemed most essential for 
the daily observance of the community : " ^attflt all 
fflzn " — " tfear (goto " — " potter tjje Ittng " — " 3Lobe tfje 
Brotfjerfjooo " ; and again, as if this latter injunction 
needed emphasis and repetition among a household of 
aged people soured with the hard fortune of their pre- 
vious lives, — - " i3e fcmolg affectioneo one to atuitfjer." One 
sentence, over a door communicating with the Mas- 
ter's side of the house, is addressed to that dignitary, — . 
"%z tfjat ruletfj fiber men must be just." All these are 
charactered in old English letters, and form part of 



ABOUT WARWICK. 95 

the elaborate ornamentation of the house. Every- 
where — on the walls, over windows and doors, and 
at all points where there is room to place them — ap- 
pear escutcheons of arms, cognizances, and crests, em- 
blazoned in their proper colors, and illuminating the 
ancient quadrangle with their splendor. One of these 
devices is a large image of a porcupine on an heraldic 
wreath, being the crest of the Lords de Lisle. But es- 
pecially is the cognizance of the Bear and Ragged Staff 
repeated over and over, and over again and again, in 
a great variety of attitudes, — at full-length and half- 
length, in paint and in oaken sculpture, in bas-relief 
and rounded image. The founder of the hospital was 
certainly disposed to reckon his own beneficence as 
among the hereditary glories of his race ; and had he 
lived and died a half-century earlier, he would have 
kept up an old Catholic custom, by enjoining the 
twelve bedesmen to pray for the welfare of his soul. 
At my first visit, some of the brethren were seated 
on the bench outside of the edifice, looking down into 
the street ; but they did not vouchsafe me a word, 
and seemed so estranged from modern life, so envel- 
oped in antique customs and old-fashioned cloaks, 
that to converse with them would have been like shout- 
ing across the gulf between our age and Queen Eliz- 
abeth's. So I passed into the quadrangle, and found 
it quite solitary, except that a plain and neat old 
woman happened to be crossing it, with an aspect of 
business and carefulness that bespoke her a woman of 
this world, and not merely a shadow of the past. Ask- 
ing her if I could come in, she answered very readily 
and civilly that I might, and said that I was free to 
look about me, hinting a hope, however, that I would 
not open the private doors of the brotherhood, as some 



96 ABOUT WARWICK. 

visitors were in the habit of doing. Under her guid* 
ance, 1 went into what was formerly the great hall of 
the establishment, where King James I. had once been 
feasted by an Earl of Warwick, as is commemorated 
by an inscription on the cobwebbed and dingy wall. 
It is a very spacious and barn-like apartment, with a 
brick floor, and a vaulted roof, the rafters of which 
are oaken beams, wonderfully carved, but hardly visi- 
ble in the duskiness that broods aloft. The hall may 
have made a splendid appearance, when it was deco- 
rated with rich tapestry, and illuminated with chande- 
liers, cressets, and torches glistening upon silver dishes, 
where King James sat at supper among his brilliantly 
dressed nobles ; but it has come to base uses in these 
latter days, — being improved, in Yankee phrase, as a 
brewery and wash-room, and as a cellar for the breth- 
ren's separate allotments of coal. 

The old lady here left me to myself, and I returned 
into the quadrangle. It was very quiet, very hand- 
some, in its own obsolete style, and must be an ex- 
ceedingly comfortable place for the old people to 
lounge in, when the inclement winds render it inexpe- 
dient to walk abroad. There are shrubs against the 
wall, on one side ; and on another is a cloistered walk, 
adorned with stags' heads and antlers, and running 
beneath a covered gallery, up to which ascends a bal- 
ustraded staircase. In the portion of the edifice oppo- 
site the entrance-arch are the apartments of the Mas- 
ter ; and looking into the window (as the old woman, 
at no request of mine, had specially informed me that 
I might), I saw a low, but vastly comfortable parlor, 
very handsomely furnished, and altogether a luxuri- 
ous place. It had a fireplace with an immense arch, 
the antique breadth of which extended almost from 



ABOUT WARWICK. 97 

wall to wall of the room, though now fitted up in such 
a way, that the modern coal-grate looked very dimin- 
utive in the midst. Grazing into this pleasant interior, 
it seemed to me, that, among these venerable sur- 
roundings, availing himself of whatever was good in 
former things, and eking out their imperfection with 
the results of modern ingenuity, the Master might 
lead a not unenviable life. On the cloistered side of 
the quadrangle, where the dark oak panels made the 
enclosed space dusky, I beheld a curtained window 
reddened by a great blaze from within, and heard the 
bubbling and squeaking of something — doubtless 
very nice and succulent — that was being cooked at 
the kitchen-fire. I think, indeed, that a whiff or two 
of the savory fragrance reached my nostrils ; at all 
events, the impression grew upon me that Leicester's 
Hospital is one of the jolliest old domiciles in England. 
I was about to depart, when another old woman, 
very plainly dressed, but fat, comfortable, and with a 
cheerful twinkle in her eyes, came in through the arch, 
and looked curiously at me. This repeated apparition 
of the gentle sex (though by no means under its love- 
liest guise) had still an agreeable effect in modifying 
my ideas of an institution which I had supposed to 
be of a stern and monastic character. She asked 
whether I wished to see the hospital, and said that 
the porter, whose office it was to attend to visitors, 
was dead, and would be buried that very day, so that 
the whole establishment could not conveniently be 
shown me. She kindly invited me, however, to visit 
the apartment occupied by her husband and herself ; 
so I followed her up the antique staircase, along the 
gallery, and into a small, oak-panelled parlor, where 
sat an old man in a long blue garment, who arose and 

VOL. VII. 7 



98 ABOUT WARWICK. 

saluted me with much courtesy. He seemed a very 
quiet person, and yet had a look of travel and adven- 
ture, and gray experience, such as I could have fancied 
in a palmer of ancient times, who might likewise have 
worn a similar costume. The little room was car- 
peted and neatly furnished ; a portrait of its occu- 
pant was hanging on the wall ; and on a table were 
two swords crossed, — one, probably, his own battle- 
weapon, and the other, which I drew half out of the 
scabbard, had an inscription on the blade, purporting 
that it had been taken from the field of Waterloo. 
My kind old hostess was anxious to exhibit all the par- 
ticulars of their housekeeping, and led me into the bed- 
room, which was in the nicest order, with a snow-white 
quilt upon the bed ; and in a little intervening room 
was a washing and bathing apparatus ; a convenience 
(judging from the personal aspect and atmosphere of 
such parties) seldom to be met with in the humbler 
ranks of British life. 

The old soldier and his wife both seemed glad of 
somebody to talk with ; but the good woman availed 
herself of the privilege far more copiously than the 
veteran himself, insomuch that he felt it expedient to 
give her an occasional nudge with his elbow in her 
well-padded ribs. " Don't you be so talkative ! " quoth 
he ; and, indeed, he could hardly find space for a word, 
and quite as little after his admonition as before. Her 
nimble tongue ran over the whole system of life in the 
hospital. The brethren, she said, had a yearly stipend 
(the amount of which she did not mention), and such 
decent lodgings as I saw, and some other advantages, 
free ; and, instead of being pestered with a great many 
rules, and made to dine together at a great table, they 
could manage their little household matters as they 



ABOUT WARWICK. 99 

liked, buying their own dinners, and having them 
cooked in the general kitchen, and eating them snugly 
in their own parlors. " And," added she, rightly 
deeming this the crowning privilege, " with the Mas- 
ter's permission, they can have their wives to take care 
of them ; and no harm comes of it ; and what more 
can an old man desire ? " It was evident enough that 
the good dame found herself in what she considered 
very rich clover, and, moreover, had plenty of small 
occupations to keep her from getting rusty and dull ; 
but the veteran impressed me as deriving far less en- 
joyment from the monotonous ease, without fear of 
change or hope of improvement, that had followed 
upon thirty years of peril and vicissitude. I fancied, 
too, that, while pleased with the novelty of a stranger's 
visit, he was still a little shy of becoming a spectacle 
for the stranger's curiosity; for, if he chose to be mor- 
bid about the matter, the establishment was but an 
almshouse, in spite of its old-fashioned magnificence, 
and his fine blue cloak only a pauper's garment with 
a silver badge on it that perhaps galled his shoulder. 
In truth, the badge and the peculiar garb, though 
quite in accordance with the manners of the Earl of 
Leicester's age, are repugnant to modern prejudices, 
and might fitly and humanely be abolished. 

A year or two afterwards I paid another visit to the 
hospital, and found a new porter established in office, 
and already capable of talking like a guide-book about 
the history, antiquities, and present condition of the 
charity. He informed me that the twelve brethren 
are selected from among old soldiers of good char- 
acter, whose other resources must not exceed an in- 
come of five pounds ; thus excluding all commissioned 
officers, whose half-pay would of course be more than 



100 ABOUT WARWICK. 

that amount. They receive from the hospital an an- 
nuity of eighty pounds each, besides their apartments, 
a garment of fine blue cloth, an annual abundance of 
ale, and a privilege at the kitchen-fire ; so that, con- 
sidering the class from which they are taken, they may 
well reckon themselves among the fortunate of the 
earth. Furthermore, they are invested with political 
rights, acquiring a vote for member of Parliament in 
virtue either of their income or brotherhood. On the 
other hand, as regards their personal freedom or con- 
duct, they are subject to a supervision which the Mas- 
ter of the hospital might render extremely annoying, 
were he so inclined ; but the military restraint under 
which they have spent the active portion of their lives 
makes it easier for them to endure the domestic disci- 
pline here imposed upon their age. The porter bore 
his testimony (whatever were its value) to their being 
as contented and happy as such a set of old people 
could possibly be, and affirmed that they spent much 
time in burnishing their silver badges, and were as 
proud of them as a nobleman of his star. These 
badges, by the by, except one that was stolen and re- 
placed in Queen Anne's time, are the very same that 
decorated the original twelve brethren. 

I have seldom met with a better guide than my 
friend the porter. He appeared to take a genuine 
interest in the peculiarities of the establishment, and 
yet had an existence apart from them, so that he could 
the better estimate what those peculiarities were. To 
be sure, his knowledge and observation were confined 
to external things, but, so far, had a sufficiently exten- 
sive scope. He led me up the staircase and exhibited 
portions of the timber framework of the edifice that 
are reckoned to be eight or nine hundred years old, 



ABOUT WARWICK. 101 

and are still neither worm-eaten nor decayed ; and 
traced out what had been a great hall in the days of 
the Catholic fraternity, though its area is now filled 
up with the apartments of the twelve brethren ; and 
pointed to ornaments of sculptured oak, done in an 
ancient religious style of art, but hardly visible amid 
the vaulted dimness of the roof. Thence we went to 
the chapel — the Gothic church which 1 noted several 
pages back — surmounting the gateway that stretches 
half across the street. Here the brethren attend daily 
prayer, and have each a prayer-book of the finest pa- 
per, with a fair, large type for their old eyes. The 
interior of the chapel is very plain, with a picture of 
no merit for an altar-piece, and a single old pane of 
painted glass in the great eastern window, represent- 
ing, — no saint, nor angel, as is customary in such 
cases, — but that grim sinner, the Earl of Leicester. 
Nevertheless, amid so many tangible proofs of his hu- 
man sympathy, one comes to doubt whether the Earl 
could have been such a hardened reprobate, after all. 

We ascended the tower of the chapel, and looked 
down between its battlements into the street, a hun- 
dred feet below us ; while clambering half-way up 
were foxglove-flowers, weeds, small shrubs, and tufts 
of grass, that had rooted themselves into the rough- 
nesses of the stone foundation. Far around us lay 
a rich and lovely English landscape, with many a 
church-spire and noble country-seat, and several ob- 
jects of high historic interest. Edge Hill, where the 
Puritans defeated Charles I., is in sight on the edge 
of the horizon, and much nearer stands the house 
where Cromwell lodged on the night before the battle. 
Right under our eyes, and half enveloping the town 
with its high-shouldering wall, so that all the closely 



102 ABOUT WARWICK. 

compacted streets seemed but a precinct of the estate, 
was the Earl of Warwick's delightful park, a wide ex- 
tent of sunny lawns, interspersed with broad contigui- 
ties of forest-shade. Some of the cedars of Lebanon 
were there, — a growth of trees in which the Warwick 
family take an hereditary pride. The two highest 
towers of the castle heave themselves up out of a mass 
of foliage, and look down in a lordly manner upon the 
plebeian roofs of the town, a part of which are slate- 
covered (these are the modern houses), and a part are 
coated with old red tiles, denoting the more ancient 
edifices. A hundred and sixty or seventy years ago, 
a great fire destroyed a considerable portion of the 
town, and doubtless annihilated many structures of a 
remote antiquity ; at least, there was a possibility of 
very old houses in the long past of Warwick, which 
King Cymbeline is said to have founded in the year 
ONE of the Christian era ! 

And this historic fact or poetic fiction, whichever it 
may be, brings to mind a more indestructible reality 
than anything else that has occurred within the pres- 
ent field of our vision ; though this includes the scene 
of Guy of Warwick's legendary exploits, and some of 
those of the Round Table, to say nothing of the Battle 
of Edge Hill. For perhaps it was in the landscape 
now under our Gyes that Posthumus wandered with the 
King's daughter, the sweet, chaste, faithful, and cour- 
ageous Imogen, the tenderest and womanliest woman 
that Shakespeare ever made immortal in the world. 
The silver Avon, which we see flowing so quietly by 
the gray castle, may have held their images in its 
bosom. 

The day, though it began brightly, had long been 
overcast, and the clouds now spat down a few spiteful 



ABOUT WARWICK. 103 

drops upon us, besides that the east-wind was very 
chill ; so we descended the winding tower-stair, and 
went next into the garden, one side of which is shut 
in by almost the only remaining portion of the old 
city-wall. A part of the garden-ground is devoted to 
grass and shrubbery, and permeated by gravel-walks, 
in the centre of one of which is a beautiful stone vase 
of Egyptian sculpture, that formerly stood on the top 
of a Nilometer, or graduated pillar for measuring the 
rise and fall of the river Nile. On the pedestal is a 
Latin inscription by Dr. Parr, who (his vicarage of 
Hatton being so close at hand) was probably often 
the Master's guest, and smoked his interminable pipe 
along these garden-walks. Of the vegetable-garden, 
which lies adjacent, the lion's share is appropriated 
to the Master, and twelve small, separate patches to 
the individual brethren, who cultivate them at their 
own judgment and by their own labor ; and their 
beans and cauliflowers have a better flavor, I doubt 
not, than if they had received them directly from 
the dead hand of the Earl of Leicester, like the rest 
of their food. In the farther part of the garden is 
an arbor for the old men's pleasure and convenience, 
and I should like well to sit down among them there, 
and find out what is really the bitter and the sweet of 
such a sort of life. As for the old gentlemen them- 
selves, they put me queerly in mind of the Salem Cus- 
tom House, and the venerable personages whom I found 
so quietly at anchor there. 

The Master's residence, forming one entire side of 
the quadrangle, fronts on the garden, and wears an 
aspect at once stately and homely. It can hardly 
have undergone any perceptible change within three 
centuries ; but the garden, into which its old windows 



104 ABOUT WARWICK. 

look has probably put off a great many eccentricities 
and quaintnesses, in the way of cunningly clipped 
shrubbery, since the gardener of Queen Elizabeth's 
reign threw down his rusty shears and took his de- 
parture. The present Master's name is Harris ; he is 
a descendant of the founder's family, a gentleman of 
independent fortune, and a clergyman of the Estab- 
lished Church, as the regulations of the hospital re- 
quire him to be. I know not what are his official 
emoluments ; but, according to all English precedent, 
an ancient charitable fund is certain to be held di- 
rectly for the behoof of those who administer it, and 
perhaps incidentally, in a moderate way, for the nom- 
inal beneficiaries ; and, in the case before us, the 
twelve brethren being so comfortably provided for, 
the Master is likely to be at least as comfortable as all 
the twelve together. Yet I ought not, even in a dis- 
tant land, to fling an idle gibe against a gentleman of 
whom I really know nothing, except that the people 
under his charge bear all possible tokens of being 
tended and cared for as sedulously as if each of them 
sat by a warm fireside of his own, with a daughter 
bustling round the hearth to make ready his porridge 
and his titbits. It is delightful to think of the good 
life which a suitable man, in the Master's position, has 
an opportunity to lead, — linked to time-honored cus- 
toms, welded in with an ancient system, never dream- 
ing of radical change, and bringing all the mellowness 
and richness of the past down into these railway- days, 
which do not compel him or his community to move a 
whit quicker than of yore. Everybody can appreci- 
ate the advantages of going ahead ; it might be well, 
sometimes, to think whether there is not a word or 
two to be said in favor of standing still or going to 
sleep. 



ABOUT WARWICK. 105 

From the garden we went into the kitchen, where 
the fire was burning hospitably, and diffused a genial 
warmth far and wide, together with the fragrance of 
some old English roast-beef, which, I think, must at 
that moment have been done nearly to a turn. The 
kitchen is a lofty, spacious, and noble room, par- 
titioned off round the fireplace, by a sort of semicir- 
cular oaken screen, or rather, an arrangement of heavy 
and high-backed settles, with an ever-open entrance 
between them, on either side of which is the omni- 
present image of the Bear and Ragged Staff, three 
feet high, and excellently carved in oak, now black 
with time and unctuous kitchen-smoke. The pon- 
derous mantel-piece, likewise of carved oak, towers 
high towards the dusky ceiling, and extends its mighty 
breadth to take in a vast area of hearth, the arch of 
the fireplace being positively so immense that I could 
compare it to nothing but the city gateway. Above 
its cavernous opening were crossed two ancient hal- 
berds, the weapons, possibly, of soldiers who had 
fought under Leicester in the Low Countries; and 
elsewhere on the walls were displayed several muskets, 
which some of the present inmates of the hospital may 
have levelled against the French. Another ornament 
of the mantel-piece was a square of silken needlework 
or embroidery, faded nearly white, but dimly repre- 
senting that wearisome Bear and Ragged Staff, which 
we should hardly look twice at, only that it was 
wrought by the fair fingers of poor Amy Robsart, 
and beautifully framed in oak from Kenilworth Cas- 
tle, at the expense of a Mr. Conner, a countryman of 
our own. Certainly, no Englishman would be capable 
of this little bit of enthusiasm. Finally, the kitchen- 
firelight glistens on a splendid display of copper flag- 



106 ABOUT WARWICK. 

ons, all of generous capacity, and one of them about 
as big as a half-barrel ; the smaller vessels contain 
the customary allowance of ale, and the larger one is 
filled with that foaming liquor on four festive occa- 
sions of the year, and emptied amain by the jolly 
brotherhood. I should be glad to see them do it ; but 
it would be an exploit fitter for Queen Elizabeth's age 
than these degenerate times. 

The kitchen is the social hall of the twelve brethren. 
In the daytime, they bring their little messes to be 
cooked here, and eat them in their own parlors ; but 
after a certain hour, the great hearth is cleared and 
swept, and the old men assemble round its blaze, each 
with his tankard and his pipe, and hold high converse 
through the evening. If the Master be a fit man for 
his office, methinks he will sometimes sit down socia- 
bly among them ; for there is an elbow-chair by the 
fireside which it would not demean his dignity to fill, 
since it was occupied by King James at the great fes- 
tival of nearly three centuries ago. A sip of the ale 
and a whiff of the tobacco-pipe would put him in 
friendly relations with his venerable household ; and 
then we can fancy him instructing them by pithy 
apothegms and religious texts, which were first uttered 
here by some Catholic priest and have impregnated 
the atmosphere ever since. If a joke goes round, it 
shall be of an elder coinage than Joe Miller's, as old 
as Lord Bacon's collection, or as the jest-book that 
Master Slender asked for when he lacked small-talk 
for sweet Anne Page. No news shall be spoken of, 
later than the drifting ashore, on the northern coast, 
of some stern-post or figure-head, a barnacled frag- 
ment of one of the great galleons of the Spanish Ar- 
mada. What a tremor would pass through the an- 



ABOUT WARWICK. 107 

t 

tique group, if a damp newspaper should suddenly be 
spread to dry before the fire ! They would feel as if 
either that printed sheet or they themselves must be 
an unreality. What a mysterious awe, if the shriek 
of the railway-train, as it reaches the Warwick sta- 
tion, should ever so faintly invade their ears I Move- 
ment of any kind seems inconsistent with the stability 
of such an institution. Nevertheless, I trust that the 
ages will carry it along with them ; because it is such 
a pleasant kind of dream for an American to find his 
way thither, and behold a piece of the sixteenth cen- 
tury set into our prosaic times, and then to depart, 
and think of its arched doorway as a spell-guarded en- 
trance which will never be accessible or visible to him 
any more. 

Not far from the market-place of Warwick stands 
the great church of St. Mary's : a vast edifice, indeed, 
and almost worthy to be a cathedral. People who pre- 
tend to skill in such matters say that it is in a poor 
style of architecture, though designed (or, at least, ex- 
tensively restored) by Sir Christopher Wren ; but I 
thought it very striking, with its wide, high, and elab- 
orate windows, its tall towers, its immense length, and 
(for it was long before I outgrew this Americanism, 
the love of an old thing merely for the sake of its 
age) the tinge of gray antiquity over the whole. Once, 
while I stood gazing up at the tower, the clock struck 
twelve with a very deep intonation, and immediately 
some chimes began to play, and kept up their resound- 
ing music for five minutes, as measured by the hand 
upon the dial. It was a very delightful harmony, as 
airy as the notes of birds, and seemed a not unbecom- 
ing freak of half-sportive fancy in the huge, ancient, 
and solemn church ; although I have seen an old-fash- 



108 ABOUT WARWICK. 

t 
ioned parlor-clock that did precisely the same thing, 
in its small way. 

The great attraction of this edifice is the Beauchamp 
(or, as the English, who delight in vulgarizing their 
fine old Norman names, call it, the Beechum) Chapel, 
where the Earls of Warwick and their kindred have 
been buried, from four hundred years back till within 
a recent period. It is a stately and very elaborate 
chapel, with a large window of ancient painted glass, 
as perfectly preserved as any that I remember seeing 
in England, and remarkably vivid in its colors. Here 
are several monuments with marble figures recumbent 
upon them, representing the Earls in their knightly 
armor, and their dames in the ruffs and court-finery 
of their day, looking hardly stiffer in stone than they 
must needs have been in their starched linen and em- 
broidery. The renowned Earl of Leicester of Queen 
Elizabeth's time, the benefactor of the hospital, re- 
clines at full length on the tablet of one of these 
tombs, side by side with his Countess, — not Amy 
Robsart, but a lady who (unless I have confused the 
story with some other mouldy scandal) is said to have 
avenged poor Amy's murder by poisoning the Earl 
himself. Be that as it may, both figures, and espe- 
cially the Earl, look like the very types of ancient 
Honor and Conjugal Faith. In consideration of his 
long-enduring kindness to the twelve brethren, I can- 
not consent to believe him as wicked as he is usually 
depicted; and it seems a marvel, now that so many 
well-established historical verdicts have been reversed, 
why some enterprising writer does not make out Leices- 
ter to have been the pattern nobleman of his age. 

In the centre of the chapel is the magnificent me- 
morial of its founder, Richard Beauchamp, Earl of 



ABOUT WARWICK. 109 

Warwick in the time of Henry VI. On a richly or- 
namented altar-tomb of gray marble lies the bronze 
figure of a knight in gilded armor, most admirably ex- 
ecuted : for the sculptors of those days had wonderful 
skill in their own style, and could make so life-like 
an image of a warrior, in brass or marble, that, if a 
trumpet were sounded over his tomb, you would ex- 
pect him to start up and handle his sword. The Earl 
whom we now speak of, however, has slept soundly in 
spite of a more serious disturbance than any blast of a 
trumpet, unless it were the final one. Some centuries 
after his death, the floor of the chapel fell down and 
broke open the stone coffin in which he was buried ; 
and among the fragments appeared the anciently en- 
tombed Earl of Warwick, with the color scarcely faded 
out of his cheeks, his eyes a little sunken, but in other 
respects looking as natural as if he had died yester- 
day. But exposure to the atmosphere appeared to be- 
gin and finish the long-delayed process of decay in a 
moment, causing him to vanish like a bubble ; so that, 
almost before there had been time to wonder at him, 
there was nothing left of the stalwart Earl save his 
hair. This sole relic the ladies of Warwick made prize 
of, and braided it into rings and brooches for their 
own adornment ; and thus, with a chapel and a pon- 
derous tomb built on purpose to protect his remains, 
this great nobleman could not help being brought un- 
timely to the light of da)% nor even keep his lovelocks 
on his skull after he had so long done with love. 
There seems to be a fatality that disturbs people in 
their sepulchres, when they have been over-careful to 
render them magnificent and impregnable, — as wit- 
ness the builders of the Pyramids, and Hadrian, Au- 
gustus, and the Scipios, and most other personages 



£10 ABOUT WARWICK. 

whose mausoleums have been conspicuous enough to 
attract the violator; and as for dead men's hair, I 
have seen a lock of King Edward the Fourth's, of a 
reddish-brown color, which perhaps was once twisted 
round the delicate forefinger of Mistress Shore. 

The direct lineage of the renowned characters that 
lie buried in this splendid chapel has long been extinct. 
The earldom is now held by the Grevilles, descendants 
of the Lord Brooke who was slain in the Parliamen- 
tary War; and they have recently (that is to say, 
within a century) built a burial-vault on the other side 
of the church, calculated (as the sexton assured me, 
with a nod as if he were pleased) to afford suitable 
and respectful accommodation to as many as fourscore 
coffins. Thank Heaven, the old man did not call 
them " caskets " ! — a vile modern phrase, which com- 
pels a person of sense and good taste to shrink more 
disgustfully than ever before from the idea of being 
buried at all. But as regards those eighty coffins, 
only sixteen have as yet been contributed ; and it may 
be a question with some minds, not merely whether 
the Grevilles will hold the earldom of Warwick until 
the full number shall be made up, but whether earl- 
doms and all manner of lordships will not have faded 
out of England long before those many generations 
shall have passed from the castle to the vault. I hope 
not. A titled and landed aristocracy, if anywise an 
evil and an encumbrance, is so only to the nation 
which is doomed to bear it on its shoulders ; and an 
American, whose sole relation to it is to admire its 
picturesque effect upon society, ought to be the last 
man to quarrel with what affords him so much gratu- 
itous enjoyment. Nevertheless, conservative as Eng. 
land is, and though I scarce ever found an English- 



ABOUT WARWICK. Ill 

man who seemed really to desire change, there was 
continually a dull sound in my ears as if the old foun- 
dations of things were crumbling away. Some time 
or other, — by no irreverent effort of violence, but, 
rather, in spite of all pious efforts to uphold a heter- 
ogeneous pile of institutions that will have outlasted 
their vitality, — at some unexpected moment, there 
must come a terrible crash. The sole reason why I 
should desire it to happen in my day is, that I might 
be there to see ! But the ruin of my own country is, 
perhaps, all that I am destined to witness ; and that 
immense catastrophe (though I am strong in the faith 
that there is a national lifetime of a thousand years in 
us yet) would serve any man well enough as his final 
spectacle on earth. 

If the visitor is inclined to carry away any little 
memorial of Warwick, he had better go to an Old Cu- 
riosity Shop in the High Street, where there is a vast 
quantity of obsolete gewgaws, great and small, and 
many of them so pretty and ingenious that you won- 
der how they came to be thrown aside and forgotten. 
As regards its minor tastes, the world changes, but 
does not improve ; it appears to me, indeed, that there 
have been epochs of far more exquisite fancy than the 
present one, in matters of personal ornament, and such 
delicate trifles as we put upon a drawing-room table, a 
mantel-piece, or a what-not. The shop in question is 
near the East Gate, but is hardly to be found without 
careful search, being denoted only by the name of 
" Redfern," painted not very conspicuously in the top- 
light of the door. Immediately on entering, we find 
ourselves among a confusion of old rubbish and valua- 
bles, ancient armor, historic portraits, ebony cabinets 
inlaid with pearl, tall, ghostly clocks, hideous old china, 



112 ABOUT WARWICK. 

dim looking-glasses in frames of tarnished magnifi- 
cence, — a thousand objects of strange aspect, and oth- 
ers that almost frighten you by their likeness in unlike- 
ness to things now in use. It is impossible to give an 
idea of the variety of articles, so thickly strewn about 
that we can scarcely move without overthrowing some 
great curiosity with a crash, or sweeping away some 
small one hitched to our sleeves. Three stories of the 
entire house are crowded in like manner. The collec- 
tion even as we see it exposed to view, must have been 
got together at great cost ; but the real treasures of the 
establishment lie in secret repositories, whence they 
are not likely to be drawn forth at an ordinary sum- 
mons ; though, if a gentleman with a competently long 
purse should call for them, I doubt not that the signet- 
ring of Joseph's friend Pharaoh, or the Duke of Alva's 
leading staff, or the dagger that killed the Duke of 
Buckingham (all of which I have seen), or any other 
almost incredible thing, might make its appearance. 
Gold snuff-boxes, antique gems, jewelled goblets, Ve- 
netian wine-glasses (which burst when poison is poured 
into them, and therefore must not be used for modern 
wine-drinking), jasper-handled knives, painted Sevres 
teacups, — in short, there are all sorts of things that 
a virtuoso ransacks the world to discover. 

It would be easier to spend a hundred pounds in 
Mr. Redfern's shop than to keep the money in one's 
pocket ; but, for my part, I contented myself with 
buying a little old spoon of silver-gilt, and fantasti- 
cally shaped, and got it at all the more reasonable rate 
because there happened to be no legend attached to it. 
I could supply any deficiency of that kind at much 
Less expense than regilding the spoon ! 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

From Leamington to Stratford - on- A von the dis* 
tance is eight or nine miles, over a road that seemed 
to me most beautiful. Not that I can recall any 
memorable peculiarities ; for the country, most of the 
way, is a succession of the gentlest swells and sub- 
sidences, affording wide and far glimpses of cham 
paign scenery here and there, and sinking almost to a 
dead level as we draw near Stratford. Any landscape 
in New England, even the tamest, has a more striking 
outline, and, besides, would have its blue eyes open in 
those lakelets that we encounter almost from mile to 
mile at home, but of which the Old Country is utterly 
destitute ; or it would smile in our faces through the 
medium of the wayside brooks that vanish under a 
low stone arch on one side of the road, and sparkle 
out again on the other. Neither of these pretty fea- 
tures is often to be found in an English scene. The 
charm of the latter consists in the rich verdure of the 
fields, in the stately wayside trees and carefully kept 
plantations of ,wood, and in the old and high cultiva- 
tion that has humanized the very sods by mingling 
so much of man's toil and care among them. To an 
American there is a kind of sanctity even in an Eng- 
lish turnip-field, when he thinks how long that small 
square of ground has been known and recognized as 
a possession, transmitted from father to son, trodden 
often by memorable feet, and utterly redeemed from 
savagery by old acquaintanceship with civilized eyes. 



114 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

The wildest things in England are more than half 
tame. The trees, for instance, whether in hedge-row, 
park, or what they call forest, have nothing wild about 
them. They are never ragged ; there is a certain 
decorous restraint in the freest outspread of their 
branches, though they spread wider than any self- 
nurturing tree ; they are tall, vigorous, bulky, with a 
look of age-long life, and a promise of more years to 
come, all of which will bring them into closer kindred 
with the race of man. Somebody or other has known 
them from the sapling upward ; and if they endure 
long enough, they grow to be traditionally observed 
and honored, and connected with the fortunes of old 
families, till, like Tennyson's Talking Oak, they bab- 
ble with a thousand leafy tongues to ears that can un- 
derstand them. 

An American tree, however, if it could grow in fair 
competition with an English one of similar species, 
would probably be the more picturesque object of the 
two. The Warwickshire elm has not so beautiful a 
shape as those that overhang our village street ; and 
as for the redoubtable English oak, there is a certain 
John Bullism in its figure, a compact rotundity of foli- 
age, a lack of irregular and various outline, that make 
it look wonderfully like a gigantic cauliflower. Its 
leaf, too, is much smaller than that of most varieties 
of American oak ; nor do I mean to doubt that the 
latter, with free leave to grow, reverent care and cul- 
tivation, and immunity from the axe, would live out 
its centuries as sturdily as its English brother, and 
prove far the nobler and more majestic specimen of a 
tree at the end of them. Still, however one's Yankee 
patriotism may struggle against the admission, it must 
bo owned that the trees and other objects of an Eng- 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 115 

lish landscape take hold of the observer by numberless 
minute tendrils, as it were, which, look as closely as 
we choose, we never find in an American scene. The 
parasitic growth is so luxuriant, that the trunk of the 
tree, so gray and dry in our climate, is better worth 
observing than the boughs and foliage ; a verdant 
mossiness coats it all over ; so that it looks almost as 
green as the leaves; and often, moreover, the stately 
stem is clustered about, high upward, with creeping 
and twining shrubs, the ivy, and sometimes the mistle- 
toe, close-clinging friends, nurtured by the moisture 
and never too fervid sunshine, and supporting them- 
selves by the old tree's abundant strength. We call 
it a parasitical vegetation ; but, if the phrase imply 
any reproach, it is unkind to bestow it on this beauti- 
ful affection and relationship which exist in England 
between one order of plants and another : the strong 
tree being always ready to give support to the trailing 
shrub, lift it to the sun, and feed it out of its own 
heart, if it crave such food ; and the shrub, on its part, 
repaying its foster-father with an ample luxuriance of 
beauty, and adding Corinthian grace to the tree's lofty 
strength. No bitter winter nips these tender little 
sympathies, no hot sun burns the life out of them; 
and therefore they outlast the longevity of the oak, 
and, if the woodman permitted, would bury it in a 
green grave, when all is over. 

Should there be nothing else along the road to look 
at, an English hedge might well suffice to occupy the 
eyes, and, to a depth beyond what he would suppose, 
the heart of an American. We often set out hedges 
in our own soil, but might as well set out figs or pine- 
apples and expect to gather fruit of them. Something 
grows, to be sure, which we choose to call a hedge ; 



116 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

but it lacks the dense, luxuriant variety of vegetation 
that is accumulated into the English original, in which 
a botanist would find a thousand shrubs and gracious 
herbs that the hedgemaker never thought of planting 
there. Among them, growing wild, are many of the 
kindred blossoms of the very flowers which our pil- 
grim fathers brought from England, for the sake of 
their simple beauty and homelike associations, and 
which we have ever since been cultivating in gardens. 
There is not a softer trait to be found in the character 
of those stern men than that they should have been 
sensible of these flower-roots clinging among the fibres 
of their rugged hearts, and have felt the necessity of 
bringing them over sea and making them hereditary 
in the new land, instead of trusting to what rarer 
beauty the wilderness might have in store for them. 

Or, if the roadside has no hedge, the ugliest stone 
fence (such as, in America, would keep itself bare and 
unsympathizing till the end of time) is sure to be 
covered with the small handiwork of Nature; that 
careful mother lets nothing go naked there, and if she 
ca*inot provide clothing, gives at least embroidery. No 
sooner is the fence built than she adopts and adorns it 
as a part of her original plan, treating the hard, un- 
comely construction as if it had all along been a fa- 
vorite idea of her own. A little sprig of ivy may be 
seen creeping up the side of the low wall and clinging 
fast with its many feet to the rough surface ; a tuft of 
grass roots itself between two of the stones, where a 
pinch or two of wayside dust has been moistened into 
nutritious soil for it ; a small bunch of fern grows in 
another crevice; a deep, soft, verdant moss spreads 
itself along the top, and over all the available inequal- 
ities of the fence ; and where nothing else will grow, 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 117 

lichens stick tenaciously to the bare stones, and varie- 
gate the monotonous gray with hues of yellow and red. 
Finally, a great deal of shrubbery clusters along the 
base of the stone wall, and takes away the hardness of 
its outline ; and in due time, as the upshot of these 
apparently aimless or sportive touches, we recognize 
that the beneficent Creator of all things, working 
through his hand-maiden whom we call Nature, has 
designed to mingle a charm of divine gracefulness 
even with so earthly an institution as a boundary 
fence. The clown who wrought at it little dreamed 
what fellow-laborer he had. 

The English should send us photographs of portions 
of the trunks of trees, the tangled and various prod- 
ucts of a hedge, and a square foot of an old wall. 
They can hardly send anything else so characteristic. 
Their artists, especially of the later school, sometimes 
toil to depict such subjects, but are apt to stiifen the 
lithe tendrils in the process. The poets succeed bet- 
ter, with Tennyson at their head, and often produce 
ravishing effects by dint of a tender minuteness of 
touch, to which the genius of the soil and climate art- 
fully impels them : for, as regards grandeur, there are 
loftier scenes in many countries than the best that 
England can show; but, for the picturesqueness of 
the smallest object that lies under its gentle gloom 
and sunshine, there is no scenery like it anywhere. 

In the foregoing paragraphs I have strayed away to 
a long distance from the road to Stratford-on-Avon ; 
for I remember no such stone fences as I have been 
speaking of in Warwickshire, nor elsewhere in Eng- 
land, except among the Lakes, or in Yorkshire, and 
the rough and hilly countries to the north of it. 
Hedges there were along my road, however, and broad, 



118 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

level fields, rustic hamlets, and cottages of ancient 
date, — - from the roof of one of which the occupant 
was tearing away the thatch, and showing what an 
accumulation of dust, dirt, mouldiness, roots of weeds, 
families of mice, swallows'-nests, and hordes of insects 
had been deposited there since that old straw was new. 
Estimating its antiquity from these tokens, Shake- 
speare himself^ in one of his morning rambles out of 
his native town, might have seen the thatch laid on ; 
at all events, the cottage - walls were old enough to 
have known him as a guest. A few modern villas 
were also to be seen, and perhaps there were mansions 
of old gentility at no great distance, but hidden among 
trees; for it is a point of English pride that such 
houses seldom allow themselves to be visible from the 
high-road. In short, I recollect nothing specially re- 
markable along the way, nor in the ^immediate ap- 
proach to Stratford ; and yet the picture of that June 
morning has a glory in my memory, owing chiefly, I 
believe, to the charm of the English summer-weather, 
the really good days of which are the most delightful 
that mortal man can ever hope to be favored with. 
Such a genial warmth ! A little too warm, it might 
be, yet only to such a degree as to assure an American 
(a certainty to which he seldom attains till attem- 
pered to the customary austerity of an English sum- 
mer-day) that he was quite warm enough. And after 
all, there was an unconquerable freshness in the at- 
mosphere, which every little movement of a breeze 
shook over me like a dash of the ocean-spray. Such 
days need bring us no other happiness than their own 
light and temperature. No doubt, I could not have 
enjoyed it so exquisitely, except that there must be 
still latent in us, Western wanderers (even after an ab- 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 119 

sence of two centuries and more), an adaptation to the 
English climate which makes us sensible of a motherly 
kindness in its scantiest sunshine, and overflows us 
with delight at its more lavish smiles. 

The spire of Shakespeare's church — the Church of 
the Holy Trinity — begins to show itself among the 
trees at a little distance from Stratford. Next we see 
the shabby old dwellings, intermixed with mean-look- 
ing houses of modern date ; and the streets being quite 
level, you are struck and surprised by nothing so much 
as the tameness of the general scene, as if Shake- 
speare's genius were vivid enough to have wrought pic- 
torial splendors in the town where he was born. Here 
and there, however, a queer edifice meets your eye, en- 
dowed with the individuality that belongs only to the 
domestic architecture of times gone by ; the house 
seems to have grown out of some odd quality in its 
inhabitant, as a sea-shell is moulded from within by 
the character of its inmate ; and having been built in 
a strange fashion, generations ago, it has ever since 
been growing stranger and quainter, as old humorists 
are apt to do. Here, too (as so often impressed me 
in decayed English towns), there appeared to be a 
greater abundance of aged people wearing small- 
clothes and leaning on sticks than you could assemble 
on our side of the water by sounding a trumpet and 
proclaiming a reward for the most venerable. I tried 
to account for this phenomenon by several theories : as, 
for example, that our new towns are unwholesome for 
age and kill it off unseasonably ; or that our old men 
have a subtile sense of fitness, and die of their own 
accord rather than live in an unseemly contrast with 
youth and novelty : but the secret may be, after all, 
that hair-dyes, false teeth, modern arts of dress, and 



120 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

contrivances of a skin-deep youthfulness, have not 
crept into these antiquated English towns, and so peo- 
ple grow old without the weary necessity of seeming 
younger than they are. 

After wandering through two or three streets, I 
found my way to Shakespeare's birthplace, which is 
almost a smaller and humbler house than any descrip- 
tion can prepare the visitor to expect ; so inevitably 
does an august inhabitant make his abode palatial to 
our imaginations, receiving his guests, indeed, in a 
castle in the air, until we unwisely insist on meeting 
him among the sordid lanes and alleys of lower earth. 
The portion of the edifice with which Shakespeare 
had anything to do is hardly large enough, in the 
basement, to contain the butcher's stall that one of 
his descendants kept, and that still remains there, 
windowless, with the cleaver-cuts in its hacked coun- 
ter, which projects into the street under a little pent- 
house-roof, as if waiting for a new occupant. 

The upper half of the door was open, and, on my 
rapping at it, a young person in black made her ap- 
pearance and admitted me ; she was not a menial, but 
remarkably genteel (an American characteristic) for 
an English girl, and was probably the daughter of the 
old gentlewoman who takes care of the house. This 
lower room has a pavement of gray slabs of stone, 
which may have been rudely squared when the house 
was new, but are now all cracked, broken, and disar- 
ranged in a most unaccountable way. One does not 
see how any ordinary usage, for whatever length of 
time, should have so smashed these heavy stones ; it 
is as if an earthquake had burst up through the floor, 
which afterwards had been imperfectly trodden down 
again. The room is whitewashed and very clean, but 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 121 

wofully shabby and dingy, coarsely built, and such as 
the most poetical imagination would find it difficult to 
idealize. In the rear of this apartment is the kitchen, 
a still smaller room, of a similar rude aspect ; it has a 
great, rough fireplace, with space for a large family 
under the blackened opening of the chimney, and an 
immense passageway for the smoke, through which 
Shakespeare may have seen the blue sky by day and 
the stars glimmering down at him by night. It is now 
a dreary spot where the long-extinguished embers used 
to be. A glowing fire, even if it covered only a quar- 
ter part of the hearth, might still do much towards 
making the old kitchen cheerful. But we get a de- 
pressing idea of the stifled, poor, sombre kind of life 
that could have been lived in such a dwelling, where 
this room seems to have been the gathering-place of 
the family, with no breadth or scope, no good retire- 
ment, but old and young huddling together cheek by 
jowl. What a hardy plant was Shakespeare's gen- 
ius, how fatal its development, since it could not be 
blighted in such an atmosphere ! It only brought hu- 
man nature the closer to him, and put more unctuous 
earth about his roots. 

Thence I was ushered up stairs to the room in which 
Shakespeare is supposed to have been born : though, 
if you peep too curiously into the matter, you may find 
the shadow of an ugly doubt on this, as well as most 
other points of his mysterious life. It is the chamber 
over the butcher's shop, and is lighted by one broad 
window containing a great many small, irregular panes 
of glass. The floor is made of planks, very rudely 
hewn, and fitting together with little neatness ; the 
naked beams and rafters, at the sides of the room and 
overhead, bear the original marks of the builder's 



122 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

broad-axe, with no evidence of an attempt to smooth 
off the job. Again we have to reconcile ourselves to 
the smallness of the space enclosed by these illustri- 
ous walls, — a circumstance more difficult to accept, 
as regards places that we have heard, read, thought, 
and dreamed much about, than any other disenchant- 
ing particular of a mistaken ideal. A few paces — ■ 
perhaps seven or eight — take us from end to end of 
it. So low it is, that I could easily touch the ceiling, 
and might have done so without a tiptoe-stretch, had 
it been a good deal higher ; and this humility of the 
chamber has tempted a vast multitude of people to 
write their names overhead in pencil. Every inch of 
the side-walls, even into the obscurest nooks and cor- 
ners, is covered with a similar record ; all the window- 
panes, moreover, are scrawled with diamond signa- 
tures, among which is said to be that of Walter Scott ; 
but so many persons have sought to immortalize them- 
selves in close vicinity to his name, that I really could 
not trace him out. Methinks it is strange that people 
do not strive to forget their forlorn little identities, 
in such situations, instead of thrusting them forward 
into the dazzle of a great renown, where, if noticed, 
they cannot but be deemed impertinent. 

This room, and the entire house, so far as I saw it, 
are whitewashed and exceedingly clean ; nor is there 
the aged, musty smell with which old Chester first 
made me acquainted, and which goes far to cure an 
American of his excessive predilection for antique 
residences. An old lady, who took charge of me up 
stairs, had the manners and aspect of a gentlewoman, 
and talked with somewhat formidable knowledge and 
appreciative intelligence about Shakespeare. Ar- 
ranged on a table and in chairs were various prints 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 123 

views of houses and scenes connected with Shake- 
speare's memory, together with editions of his works 
and local publications about his home and haunts, 
from the sale of which this respectable lady perhaps 
realizes a handsome profit. At any rate, I bought a 
good many of them, conceiving that it might be the 
civillest way of requiting her for her instructive con- 
versation and the trouble she took in showing me the 
house. It cost me a pang (not a curmudgeonly, but a 
gentlemanly one) to offer a downright fee to the lady- 
like girl who had admitted me ; but I swallowed my 
delicate scruples with some little difficulty, and she 
digested hers, so far as I could observe, with no diffi- 
culty at all. In fact, nobody need fear to hold out 
half a crown to any person with whom he has occa- 
sion to speak a word in England. 

I should consider it unfair to quit Shakespeare's 
house without the frank acknowledgment that I was 
conscious of not the slightest emotion while viewing 
it, nor any quickening of the imagination. This has 
often happened to me in my visits to memorable 
places. Whatever pretty and apposite reflections I 
may have made upon the subject had either occurred 
to me before I ever saw Stratford, or have been elabo- 
rated since. It is pleasant, nevertheless, to think that 
I have seen the place ; and I believe that I can form 
a more sensible and vivid idea of Shakespeare as a 
flesh-and-blood individual now that I have stood on 
the kitchen-hearth and in the birth-chamber ; but I 
am not quite certain that this power of realization is 
altogether desirable in reference to a great poet. The 
Shakespeare whom I met there took various guises, 
but had not his laurel on. He was successively the 
roguish boy, — the youthful deer-stealer, — the com- 



124 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

rade of players, — the too familiar friend of Dave- 
n ant's mother, — the careful, thrifty, thriven man of 
property who came back from London to lend money 
on bond, and occupy the best house in Stratford, — 
the mellow, red-nosed, autumnal boon-companion of 
John a' Combe, — and finally (or else the Stratford 
gossips belied him), the victim of convivial habits, 
who met his death by tumbling into a ditch on his 
way home from a drinking-bout, and left his second- 
best bed to his poor wife. 

I feel, as sensibly as the reader can, what horrible 
impiety it is to remember these things, be they true 
or false. In either case, they ought to vanish out of 
sight on the distant ocean-line of the past, leaving a 
pure, white memory, even as a sail, though perhaps 
darkened with many stains, looks snowy white on the 
far horizon. But I draw a moral from these unwor- 
thy reminiscences and this embodiment of the poet, as 
suggested by some of the grimy actualities of his life. 
It is for the high interests of the world not to insist 
upon finding out that its greatest men are, in a certain 
lower sense, very much the same kind of men as the 
rest of us, and often a little worse ; because a common 
mind cannot properly digest such a discovery, nor ever 
know the true proportion of the great man's good and 
evil, nor how small a part of him it was that touched 
our muddy or dusty earth. Thence comes moral be- 
wilderment, and even intellectual loss, in regard to 
what is best of him. When Shakespeare invoked a 
curse on the man who should stir his bones, he per- 
haps meant the larger share of it for him or them who 
should pry into his perishing earthliness, the defects 
or even the merits of the character that he wore in 
Stratford, when he had left mankind so much to muse 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 125 

upon that was imperishable and divine. Heaven keep 
me from incurring any part of the anathema in re- 
quital for the irreverent sentences above written ! 

From Shakespeare's house, the next step, of course, 
is to visit his burial-place. The appearance of the 
church is most venerable and beautiful, standing amid 
a great green shadow of lime-trees, above which rises 
the spire, while the Gothic battlements and buttresses 
and vast arched windows are obscurely seen through 
the boughs. The Avon loiters past the churchyard, 
an exceedingly sluggish river, which might seem to 
have been considering which way it should flow ever 
since Shakespeare left off paddling in it and gather- 
ing the large forget-me-nots that grow among its flags 
and water-weeds. 

An old man in small-clothes was waiting at the 
gate ; and inquiring whether I wished to go in, he pre- 
ceded me to the church-porch, and rapped. I could 
have done it quite as effectually for myself ; but it 
seems the old people of the neighborhood haunt about 
the churchyard, in spite of the frowns and remon- 
strances of the sexton, who grudges them the half-elee- 
mosynary sixpence which they sometimes get from 
visitors. I was admitted into the church by a respect- 
able-looking and intelligent man in black, the parish- 
clerk, I suppose, and probably holding a richer incum- 
bency than his vicar, if all the fees which he handles 
remain in his own pocket. He was already exhibiting 
the Shakespeare monuments to two or three visitors, 
and several other parties came in while I was there. 

The poet and his family are in possession of what 
may be considered the very best burial-places that the 
church affords. They lie in a row, right across the 
breadth of the chancel, the foot of each gravestone 



126 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

being close to the elevated floor on which the altar 
stands. Nearest to the side - wall, beneath Shake- 
speare's bust, is a slab bearing a Latin inscription ad- 
dressed to his wife, and covering her remains ; then 
his own slab, with the old anathematizing stanza 
upon it ; then that of Thomas Nash, who married his 
granddaughter ; then that of Dr. Hall, the husband of 
his daughter Susannah ; and, lastly, Susannah's own. 
Shakespeare's is the commonest -looking slab of all, 
being just such a flag-stone as Essex Street in Salem 
used to be paved with, when I was a boy. Moreover, 
unless my eyes or recollection deceive me, there is a 
crack across it, as if it had already undergone some 
such violence as the inscription deprecates. Unlike 
the other monuments of the family, it bears no name, 
nor am I acquainted with the grounds or authority on 
which it is absolutely determined to be Shakespeare's ; 
although, being in a range with those of his wife and 
children, it might naturally be attributed to him. But, 
then, why does his wife, who died afterwards, take 
precedence of him and occupy the place next his bust? 
And where are the graves of another daughter and a 
son, who have a better right in the family row than 
Thomas Nash, his grandson-in-law ? Might not one 
or both of them have been laid under the nameless 
stone? But it is dangerous trifling with Shakespeare's 
dust ; so I forbear to meddle further with the grave 
(though the prohibition makes it tempting), and shall 
let whatever bones be in it rest in peace. Yet I must 
needs add that the inscription on the bust seems to 
imply that Shakespeare's grave was directly under- 
neath it. 

The poet's bust is affixed to the northern wall of 
the church, the base of it being about a man's height, 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 127 

or rather more, above the floor of the chancel. The 
features of this piece of sculpture are entirely unlike 
any portrait of Shakespeare that I have ever seen, 
and compel me to take down the beautiful, lofty- 
browed, and noble picture of him which has hitherto 
hung in my mental portrait-gallery. The bust cannot 
be said to represent a beautiful face or an eminently 
noble head ; but it clutches firmly hold of one's sense 
of reality and insists upon your accepting it, if not as 
Shakespeare the poet, yet as the wealthy burgher of 
Stratford, the friend of John a' Combe, who lies yon- 
der in the corner. I know not what the phrenologists 
say to the bust. The forehead is but moderately de- 
veloped, and retreats somewhat, the upper part of the 
skull rising pyramidally ; the eyes are prominent al- 
most beyond the penthouse of the brow ; the upper lip 
is so long that it must have been almost a deformity, 
unless the sculptor artistically exaggerated its length, 
in consideration, that, on the pedestal, it must be fore- 
shortened by being looked at from below. On the 
whole, Shakespeare must have had a singular rather 
than a prepossessing face ; and it is wonderful how, 
with this bust before its eyes, the world has persisted 
in maintaining an erroneous notion of his appearance, 
allowing painters and sculptors to foist their idealized 
nonsense on us all, instead of the genuine man. For 
my part, the Shakespeare of my mind's eye is hence- 
forth to be a personage of a ruddy English complex- 
ion, with a reasonably capacious brow, intelligent and 
quickly observant eyes, a nose curved slightly out- 
ward, a long, queer upper lip, with the mouth a little 
unclosed beneath it, and cheeks considerably developed 
in the lower part and beneath the chin. But when 
Shakespeare was himself (for nine tenths of the time, 



128 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

according to all appearances, he was but the burgher 
of Stratford), he doubtless shone through this dull 
mask and transfigured it into the face of an angel. 

Fifteen or twenty feet behind the row of Shake- 
speare gravestones is the great east -window of the 
church, now brilliant with stained glass of recent 
manufacture. On one side of this window, under a 
sculptured arch of marble, lies a full-length marble 
figure of John a' Combe, clad in what I take to be a 
robe of municipal dignity, and holding its hands de- 
voutly clasped. It is a sturdy English figure, with 
coarse features, a type of ordinary man whom we 
smile to see immortalized in the sculpturesque mate- 
rial of poets and heroes ; but the prayerful attitude 
encourages us to believe that the old usurer may not, 
after all, have had that grim reception in the other 
world which Shakespeare's squib foreboded for him. 
By the by, till I grew somewhat familiar with War- 
wickshire pronunciation, I never understood that the 
point of those ill-natured lines was a pun. " ' Oho ! ' 
quoth the Devil, ' 't is my John a' Combe ! ' " — that 
is, " My John has come ! " 

Close to the poet's bust is a nameless, oblong, cubic 
tomb, supposed to be that of a clerical dignitary of 
the fourteenth century. The church has other mural 
monuments and altar-tombs, one or two of the latter 
upholding the recumbent figures of knights in armor 
and their dames, very eminent and worshipful person- 
ages in their day, no doubt, but doomed to appear for- 
ever intrusive and impertinent within the precincts 
which Shakespeare has made his own. His renown 
is tyrannous, and suffers nothing else to be recognized 
within the scope of its material presence, unless illu- 
minated by some side-ray from himself. The clerk 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 129 

informed me that interments no longer take place in 
any part of the church. And it is better so ; for 
methinks a person of delicate individuality, curious 
about his burial-place, and desirous of six feet of earth 
for himself alone, could never endure to lie buried 
near Shakespeare, but would rise up at midnight and 
grope his way out of the church-door, rather than sleep 
in the shadow of so stupendous a memory. 

I should hardly have dared to add another to the 
innumerable descriptions of Stratford-on-Avon, if it 
had not seemed to me that this would form a fitting 
framework to some reminiscences of a very remarkable 
woman. Her labor, while she lived, was of a nature 
and purpose outwardly irreverent to the name of Shake- 
speare, yet, by its actual tendency, entitling her to 
the distinction of being that one of all his worshippers 
who sought, though she knew it not, to place the rich- 
est and stateliest diadem upon his brow. We Amer- 
icans, at least, in the scanty annals of our literature, 
cannot afford to forget her high and conscientious ex- 
ercise of noble faculties, which, indeed, if you look at 
the matter in one way, evolved only a miserable error, 
but, more fairly considered, produced a result worth 
almost what it cost her. Her faith in her own ideas 
was so genuine, that, erroneous as they were, it trans- 
muted them to gold, or, at all events, interfused a 
large proportion of that precious and indestructible 
substance among the waste material from which it 
can readily be sifted. 

The only time I ever saw Miss Bacon was in Lon- 
don, where she had lodgings in Spring Street, Sussex 
Gardens, at the house of a grocer, a portly, middle- 
aged, civil, and friendly man, who, as well as his wife, 
appeared to feel a personal kindness towards their 

VOL. VII. 9 



130 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

lodger. I was ushered up two (and I rather believe 
three) pair of stairs into a parlor somewhat humbly 
furnished, and told that Miss Bacon would come soon. 
There were a number of books on the table, and, look- 
ing into them, I found that every one had some ref- 
erence, more or less immediate, to her Shakespearian 
theory, — a volume of Raleigh's " History of the 
World," a volume of Montaigne, a volume of Lord 
Bacon's Letters, a volume of Shakespeare's Plays ; and 
on another table lay a large roll of manuscript, which 
I presume to have been a portion of her work. To be 
sure, there was a pocket-Bible among the books, but 
everything else referred to the one despotic idea that 
had got possession of her mind ; and as it had en- 
grossed her whole soul as well as her intellect, I have 
no doubt that she had established subtile connections 
between it and the Bible likewise. As is apt to be 
the case with solitary students, Miss Bacon probably 
read late and rose late ; for I took up Montaigne (it 
was Hazlitt's translation) and had been reading his 
journey to Italy a good while before she appeared. 

I had expected (the more shame for me, having no 
other ground of such expectation than that she was a 
literary woman) to see a very homely, uncouth, elderly 
personage, and was quite agreeably disappointed by 
her aspect. She was rather uncommonly tall, and 
had a striking and expressive face, dark hair, dark 
eyes, which shone with an inward light as soon as she 
began to speak, and by and by a color came into her 
cheeks and made her look almost young. Not that 
she really was so ; she must have been beyond middle 
age : and there was no unkindness in coining to that 
conclusion, because, making allowance for years and 
ill-health, I could suppose her to have been handsome 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 131 

and exceedingly attractive once. Though wholly es- 
tranged from society, there was little or no restraint 
or embarrassment in her manner : lonely people are 
generally glad to give utterance to their pent-up ideas, 
and often bubble over with them as freely as children 
with their new-found syllables. I cannot tell how it 
came about, but we immediately found ourselves tak- 
ing a friendly and familiar tone together, and began 
to talk as if we had known one another a very long 
while. A little preliminary correspondence had indeed 
smoothed the way, and we had a definite topic in the 
contemplated publication of her book. 

She was very communicative about her theory, and 
would have been much more so had I desired it ; but, 
being conscious within myself of a sturdy unbelief, I 
deemed it fair and honest rather to repress than draw 
her out upon the subject. Unquestionably, she was a 
monomaniac ; these overmastering ideas about the au- 
thorship of Shakespeare's Plays, and the deep political 
philosophy concealed beneath the surface of them, had 
completely thrown her off her balance ; but at the 
same time they had wonderfully developed her intel- 
lect, and made her what she could not otherwise have 
become. It was a very singular phenomenon : a sys- 
tem of philosophy growing up in this woman's mind 
without her volition, — contrary, in fact, to the deter- 
mined resistance of her volition, — and substituting 
itself in the place of everything that originally grew 
there. To have based such a system on fancy, and 
unconsciously elaborated it for herself, was almost as 
wonderful as really to have found it in the plays. 
But, in a certain sense, she did actually find it there. 
Shakespeare has surface beneath surface, to an im- 
measurable depth, adapted to the plummet - line of 



132 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

every reader ; his works present many phases of truth, 
each with scope large enough to fill a contemplative 
mind. Whatever you seek in him you will surely dis- 
cover, provided you seek truth. There is no exhaust- 
ing the various interpretation of his symbols ; and a 
thousand years hence a world of new readers will pos- 
sess a whole library of new books, as we ourselves do, 
in these volumes old already. I had half a mind to 
suggest to Miss Bacon this explanation of her theory, 
but forbore, because (as I could readily perceive) she 
had as princely a spirit as Queen Elizabeth herself, 
and would at once have motioned me from the room. 

I had heard, long ago, that she believed that the 
material evidences of her dogma as to the authorship, 
together with the key of the new philosophy, would be 
found buried in Shakespeare's grave. Recently, as I 
understood her, this notion had been somewhat modi- 
fied, and was now accurately defined and fully devel- 
oped in her mind, with a result of perfect certainty. 
In Lord Bacon's Letters, on which she laid her finger 
as she spoke, she had discovered the key and clew to 
the whole mystery. There were definite and minute 
instructions how to find a will and other documents 
relating to the conclave of Elizabethan philosophers, 
which were concealed (when and by whom she did not 
inform me) in a hollow space in the under surface of 
Shakespeare's gravestone. Thus the terrible prohibi- 
tion to remove the stone was accounted for. The di- 
rections, she intimated, went completely and precisely 
to the point, obviating all difficulties in the way of 
coming at the treasure, and even, if I remember right, 
were so contrived as to ward off any troublesome con- 
sequences likely to ensue from the interference of the 
parish-officers. All that Miss Bacon now remained in 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 133 

England for — indeed, the object for which she had 
come hither, and which had kept her here for three 
years past — was to obtain possession of these mate- 
rial and unquestionable proofs of the authenticity of 
her theory. 

She communicated all this strange matter in a low, 
quiet tone ; while, on my part, I listened as quietly, 
and without any expression of dissent. Controversy 
against a faith so settled would have shut her up at 
once, and that, too, without in the least weakening her 
belief in the existence of those treasures of the tomb : 
and had it been possible to convince her of their in- 
tangible nature, I apprehend that there would have 
been nothing left for the poor enthusiast save to col- 
lapse and die. She frankly confessed that she could 
no longer bear the society of those who did not at least 
lend a certain sympathy to her views, if not fully 
share in them ; and meeting little sympathy or none, 
she had now entirely secluded herself from the world. 
In all these years, she had seen Mrs. Farrar a few 
times, but had long ago given her up ; Carlyle once 
or twice, but not of late, although he had received her 
kindly; Mr. Buchanan, while Minister in England, 
had once called on her ; and General Campbell, our 
Consul in London, had met her two or three times on 
business. With these exceptions, which she marked 
so scrupulously that it was perceptible what epochs 
they were in the monotonous passage of her days, she 
had lived in the profoundest solitude. She never 
walked out ; she suffered much from ill-health ; and 
yet, she assured me, she was perfectly happy. 

I could well conceive it ; for Miss Bacon imagined 
herself to have received (what is certainly the greatest 
boon ever assigned to mortals^ a high mission in the 



134 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

world, with adequate powers for its accomplishment ; 
and lest even these should prove insufficient, she had 
faith that special interpositions of Providence were 
forwarding her human efforts. This idea was contin- 
ually coming to the surface, during our interview. 
She believed, for example, that she had been provi- 
dentially led to her lodging-house, and put in relations 
with the good-natured grocer and his family ; and, to 
say the truth, considering what a savage and stealthy 
tribe the London lodging-house keepers usually are, 
the honest kindness of this man and his household ap- 
peared to have been little less than miraculous. Evi- 
dently, too, she thought that Providence had brought 
me forward — a man somewhat connected with litera- 
ture — at the critical juncture when she needed a ne- 
gotiator with the booksellers ; and, on my part, though 
little accustomed to regard myself as a divine minis- 
ter, and though I might even have preferred that 
Providence should select some other instrument, I had 
no scruple in undertaking to do what I could for her. 
Her book, as I could see by turning it over, was a 
very remarkable one, and worthy of being offered, to 
the public, which, if wise enough to appreciate it, 
would be thankful for what was good iu it and merci- 
ful to its faults. It was founded on a prodigious error, 
but was built up from that foundation with a good 
many prodigious truths. And, at all events, whether 
I could aid her literary views or no, it would have 
been both rash and impertinent in me to attempt 
drawing poor Miss Bacon out of her delusions, which 
were the condition on which she lived in comfort and 
joy, and in the exercise of great intellectual power. 
So I left her to dream as she pleased about the treas* 
ures of Shakespeare's tombstone, and to form what- 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 135 

ever designs might seem good to herself for obtaining 
possession of them. I was sensible of a lady-like feel- 
ing of propriety in Miss Bacon, and a New England 
orderliness in her character, and, in spite of her be- 
wilderment, a sturdy common-sense, which I trusted 
would begin to operate at the right time, and keep 
her from any actual extravagance. And as regarded 
this matter of the tombstone, so it proved. 

The interview lasted above an hour, during which 
she flowed out freely, as to the sole auditor, capable 
of any degree of intelligent sympathy, whom she had 
met with in a very long while. Her conversation was 
remarkably suggestive, alluring forth one's own ideas 
and fantasies from the shy places where they usually 
haunt. She was indeed an admirable talker, consider- 
ing how long she had held her tongue for lack of a 
listener, — pleasant, sunny, and shadowy, often piq- 
uant, and giving glimpses of all a woman's various 
and readily changeable moods and humors ; and be- 
neath them all there ran a deep and powerful under- 
current of earnestness, which did not fail to produce 
in the listener's mind something like a temporary faith 
in what she herself believed so fervently. But the 
streets of London are not favorable to enthusiasms of 
this kind, nor, in fact, are they likely to flourish any- 
where in the English atmosphere; so that, long be- 
fore reaching Paternoster Row, I felt that it would be 
a difficult and doubtful matter to advocate the publi- 
cation of Miss Bacon's book. Nevertheless, it did 
finally get published. 

Months before that happened, however, Miss Ba- 
con had taken up her residence at Stratford-on-Avon, 
drawn thither by the magnetism of those rich secrets 
which she supposed to have been hidden by Raleigh, 



136 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

or Bacon, or I know not whom, in Shakespeare's 
grave, and protected there by a curse, as pirates used 
to bury their gold in the guardianship of a fiend. 
She took a humble lodging and began to haunt the 
church like a ghost. But she did not condescend to 
any stratagem or underhand attempt to violate the 
grave, which, had she been capable of admitting such 
an idea, might possibly have been accomplished by the 
aid of a resurrection-man. As her first step, she made 
acquaintance with the clerk, and began to sound him 
as to the feasibility of her enterprise and his own will- 
ingness to engage in it. The clerk apparently listened 
with not unfavorable ears; but as his situation (which 
the fees of pilgrims, more numerous than at any Cath- 
olic shrine, render lucrative) would have been for- 
feited by any malfeasance in office, he stipulated for 
liberty to consult the vicar. Miss Bacon requested 
to tell her own story to the reverend gentleman, and 
seems to have been received by him with the utmost 
kindness, and even to have succeeded in making a cer- 
tain impression on his mind as to the desirability of 
the search. As their interview had been under the 
seal of secrecy, he asked permission to consult a friend, 
who, as Miss Bacon either found out or surmised, was 
a practitioner of the law. What the legal friend ad- 
vised she did not learn ; but the negotiation contin- 
ued, and certainly was never broken off by an abso- 
lute refusal on the vicar's part. He, perhaps, was 
kindly temporizing with our poor countrywoman, whom 
an Englishman of ordinary mould would have sent to 
a lunatic asylum at once. I cannot help fancying, 
however, that her familiarity with the events of Shake- 
speare's life, and of his death and burial (of which 
she would speak as if she had been present at the 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 137 

edge of the grave), and all the history, literature, and 
personalities of the Elizabethan age, together with the 
prevailing power of her own belief, and the eloquence 
with which she knew how to enforce it, had really 
gone some little way toward making a convert of the 
good clergyman. If so, I honor him above all the 
hierarchy of England. 

The affair certainly looked very hopeful. However 
erroneously, Miss Bacon had understood from the 
vicar that no obstacles would be interposed to the in- 
vestigation, and that he himself would sanction it with 
his presence. It was to take place after nightfall; 
and all preliminary arrangements being made, the 
vicar and clerk professed to wait only her word in or- 
der to set about lifting the awful stone from the sepul- 
chre. So, at least, Miss Bacon believed ; and as her 
bewilderment was entirely in her own thoughts, and 
never disturbed her perception or accurate remem- 
brance of external things, I see no reason to doubt it, 
except it be the tinge of absurdity in the fact. But, 
in this apparently prosperous state of things, her own 
convictions began to falter. A doubt stole into her 
mind whether she might not have mistaken the depos- 
itory and mode of concealment of those historic treas- 
ures; and, after once admitting the doubt, she was 
afraid to hazard the shock of uplifting the stone and 
finding nothing. She examined the surface of the 
gravestone, and endeavored, without stirring it, to esti- 
mate whether it were of such thickness as to be capa- 
ble of containing the archives of the Elizabethan club. 
She went over anew the proofs, the clews, the enigmas, 
the pregnant sentences, which she had discovered in 
Bacon's Letters and elsewhere, and now was frightened 
to perceive that they did not point so definitely to 



188 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

Shakespeare's tomb as she had heretofore supposed. 
There was an unmistakably distinct reference to a 
tomb, but it might be Bacon's, or Raleigh's, or Spen- 
ser's ; and instead of the " Old Player," as she pro- 
fanely called him, it might be either of those three 
illustrious dead, poet, warrior, or statesman, whose 
ashes, in Westminster Abbey, or the Tower burial- 
ground, or wherever they sleep, it was her mission to 
disturb. It is very possible, moreover, that her acute 
mind may always have had a lurking and deeply 
latent distrust of its own fantasies, and that this now 
became strong enough to restrain her from a decisive 
step. 

But she continued to hover around the church, and 
seems to have had full freedom of entrance in the day- 
time, and special license, on one occasion at least, at a 
late hour of the night. She went thither with a dark- 
lantern, which could but twinkle like a glow-worm 
through the volume of obscurity that filled the great 
dusky edifice. Groping her way up the aisle and to- 
wards the chancel, she sat down on the elevated part 
of the pavement above Shakespeare's grave. If the 
divine poet really wrote the inscription there, and 
cared as much about the quiet of his bones as its dep- 
recatory earnestness would imply, it was time for those 
crumbling relics to bestir themselves under her sacri- 
legious feet. But they were safe. She made no at- 
tempt to disturb them ; though, I believe, she looked 
narrowly into the crevices between Shakespeare's and 
the two adjacent stones, and in some way satisfied 
herself that her single strength would suffice to lift 
the former, in case of need. She threw the feeble ray 
of her lantern up towards the bust, but could not 
make it visible beneath the darkness of the vaulted 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 139 

roof. Had she been subject to superstitious terrors, 
it is impossible to conceive of a situation that could 
better entitle her to feel them, for, if Shakespeare's 
ghost would rise at any provocation, it must have 
shown itself then ; but it is my sincere belief, that, if 
his figure had appeared within the scope of her dark- 
lantern, in his slashed doublet and gown, and with his 
eyes bent on her beneath the high, bald forehead, just 
as we see him in the bust, she would have met him 
fearlessly, and controverted his claims to the author- 
ship of the plays, to his very face. She had taught 
herself to contemn " Lord Leicester's groom " (it was 
one of her disdainful epithets for the world's incom- 
parable poet) so thoroughly, that even his disembodied 
spirit would hardly have found civil treatment at Miss 
Bacon's hands. 

Her vigil, though it appears to have had no definite 
object, continued far into the night. Several times 
she heard a low movement in the aisles : a stealthy, 
dubious footfall prowling about in the darkness, now 
here, now there, among the pillars and ancient tombs, 
as if some restless inhabitant of the latter had crept 
forth to peep at the intruder. By and by the clerk 
made his appearance, and confessed that he had been 
watching her ever since she entered the church. 

About this time it was that a strange sort of weari- 
ness seems to have fallen upon her : her toil was all 
but done, her great purpose, as she believed, on the 
very point of accomplishment, when she began to re- 
gret that so stupendous a mission had been imposed 
on the fragility of a woman. Her faith in the new 
philosophy was as mighty as ever, and so was her con- 
fidence in her own adequate development of it, now 
about to be given to the world ; yet she wished, or fan* 



140 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

cied so, that it might never have been her duty to 
achieve this unparalleled task, and to stagger feebly 
forward under her immense burden of responsibility 
and renown. So far as her personal conceru in the 
matter went, she would gladly have forfeited the re- 
ward of her patient study and labor for so many years, 
her exile from her country and estrangement from her 
family and friends, her sacrifice of health and all other 
interests to this one pursuit, if she could only find her- 
self free to dwell in Stratford and be forgotten. She 
liked the old slumberous town, and awarded the only 
praise that ever I knew her to bestow on Shakespeare, 
the individual man, by acknowledging that his taste in 
a residence was good, and that he knew how to choose 
a suitable retirement for a person of shy, but genial 
temperament. And at this point, I cease to possess 
the means of tracing her vicissitudes of feeling any 
further. In consequence of some advice which I fan- 
cied it my duty to tender, as being the only confidant 
whom she now had in the world, I fell under Miss Ba- 
con's most severe and passionate displeasure, and was 
cast off by her in the twinkling of an eye. It was a 
misfortune to which her friends were always particu- 
larly liable ; but I think that none of them ever loved, 
or even respected, her most ingenuous and noble, but 
likewise most sensitive and tumultuous character, the 
less for it. 

At that time her book was passing through the 
press. Without prejudice to her literary ability, it 
must be allowed that Miss Bacon was wholly unfit to 
prepare her own work for publication, because, among 
many other reasons, she was too thoroughly in earnest 
to know what to leave out. Every leaf and line was 
sacred, lor all had been written under so deep a con- 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 141 

viction of truth as to assume, in her eyes, the aspect of 
inspiration. A practised book-maker, with entire con- 
trol of her materials, would have shaped out a duodec- 
imo volume full of eloquent and ingenious dissertation, 

— criticisms which quite take the color and pungency 
out of other people's critical remarks on Shakespeare, 

— philosophic truths which she imagined herself to 
have found at the roots of his conceptions, and which 
certainly come from no inconsiderable depth some- 
where. There was a great amount of rubbish, which 
any competent editor would have shovelled out of the 
way. But Miss Bacon thrust the whole bulk of in- 
spiration and nonsense into the press in a lump, and 
there tumbled out a ponderous octavo volume, which 
fell with a dead thump at the feet of the public, and 
has never been picked up. A few persons turned over 
one or two of the leaves, as it lay there, and essayed 
to kick the volume deeper into the mud ; for they were 
the hack critics of the minor periodical press in Lon- 
don, than whom, I suppose, though excellent fellows 
in their way, there are no gentlemen in the world less 
sensible of any sanctity in a book, or less likely to rec- 
ognize an author's heart in it, or more utterly careless 
about bruising, if they do recognize it. It is their 
trade. They could not do otherwise. I never thought 
of blaming them. It was not for such an Englishman 
as one of these to get beyond the idea that an assault 
was meditated on England's greatest poet. From the 
scholars and critics of her own country, indeed, Miss 
Bacon might have looked for a worthier appreciation, 
because many of the best of them have higher cultiva- 
tion, and finer and deeper literary sensibilities than all 
but the very profoundest and brightest of Englishmen. 
But they are not a courageous body of men ; they dare 



142 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN, 

not think a truth that has an odor of absurdity, lest 
they should feel themselves bound to speak it out. If 
any American ever wrote a word in her behalf, Miss 
Bacon never knew it, nor did I. Our journalists at 
once republished some of the most brutal vituperations 
of the English press, thus pelting their poor country- 
woman with stolen mud, without even waiting to know 
whether the ignominy was deserved. And they never 
have known it, to this day, nor ever will. 

The next intelligence that I had of Miss Bacon was 
by a letter from the mayor of Stratford-on-Avon. He 
was a medical man, and wrote both in his official and 
professional character, telling me that an American 
lady, who had recently published what the mayor 
called a " Shakespeare book," was afflicted with insan- 
ity. In a lucid interval she had referred to me, as 
a person who had some knowledge of her family and 
affairs. What she may have suffered before her in- 
tellect gave way, we had better not try to imagine. 
No author had ever hoped so confidently as she ; none 
ever failed more utterly. A superstitious fancy might 
suggest that the anathema on Shakespeare's tombstone 
had fallen heavily on her head, in requital of even the 
unaccomplished purpose of disturbing the dust be- 
neath, and that the " Old Player " had kept so quietly 
in his grave, on the night of her vigil, because he fore- 
saw how soon and terribly he would be avenged. But 
if that benign spirit takes any care or cognizance of 
such things now, he has surely requited the injustice 
that she sought to do him — the high justice that she 
really did — by a tenderness of love and pity of which 
only he could he capable. What matters it though 
she called him by some other name ? He had wrought 
a greater miracle on her than on all the world besides. 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 143 

This bewildered enthusiast had recognized a depth in 
the man whom she decried, which scholars, critics, and 
learned societies, devoted to the elucidation of his un- 
rivalled scenes, had never imagined to exist there. 
She had paid him the loftiest honor that all these ages 
of renown have been able to accumulate upon his 
memory. And when, not many months after the out- 
ward failure of her lifelong object, she passed into the 
better world, I know not why we should hesitate to be- 
lieve that the immortal poet may have met her on the 
threshold and led her in, reassuring her with friendly 
and comfortable words, and thanking her (yet with a 
smile of gentle humor in his eyes at the thought of 
certain mistaken speculations) for having interpreted 
him to mankind so well. 

I believe that it has been the fate of this remarkable 
book never to have had more than a single reader. I 
myself am acquainted with it only in insulated chap- 
ters and scattered pages and paragraphs. But, since 
my return to America, a young man of genius and 
enthusiasm has assured me that he has positively read 
the book from beginning to end, and is completely a 
convert to its doctrines. It belongs to him, therefore, 
and not to me, — whom, in almost the last letter that 
I received from her, she declared unworthy to meddle 
with her work, — it belongs surely to this one indi- 
vidual, who has done her so much justice as to know 
what she wrote, to place Miss Bacon in her due posi- 
tion before the public and posterity. 

This has been too sad a story. To lighten the rec- 
ollection of it, I will think of my stroll homeward past 
Charlecote Park, where I beheld the most stately elms, 
singly, in clumps, and in groves, scattered all about 
in the sunniest, shadiest, sleepiest fashion ; so that I 



144 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

could not but believe in lengthened, loitering, drowsy 
enjoyment which these trees must have in their ex- 
istence. Diffused over slow-paced centuries, it need 
not be keen nor bubble into thrills and ecstasies, like 
the momentary delights of short-lived human beings. 
They were civilized trees, known to man, and be- 
friended by him for ages past. There is an indescrib- 
able difference — as I believe I have heretofore en- 
deavored to express — between the tamed, but by no 
means effete (on the contrary, the richer and more 
luxuriant), nature of England, and the rude, shaggy > 
barbarous nature which offers us its racier companion- 
ship in America. No less a change has been wrought 
among the wildest creatures that inhabit what the 
English call their forests. By and by, among those 
refined and venerable trees, I saw a large herd of deer, 
mostly reclining, but some standing in picturesque 
groups, while the stags threw their large antlers aloft, 
as if they had been taught to make themselves tribu- 
tary to the scenic effect. Some were running fleetly 
about, vanishing from light into shadow and glancing 
forth again, with here and there a little fawn career- 
ing at its mother's heels. These deer are almost in 
the same relation to the wild, natural state of their 
kind that the trees of an English park hold to the 
rugged growth of an American forest. They have 
held a certain intercourse with man for immemorial 
years ; and, most probably, the stag that Shakespeare 
killed was one of the progenitors of this very herd, 
and may himself have been a partly civilized and hu- 
manized deer, though in a less degree than these re- 
mote posterity. They are a little wilder than sheep, 
but they do not snuff the air at the approach of hu- 
man beings, nor evince much alarm at their pretty 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 145 

close proximity ; although if you continue to advance, 
they toss their heads and take to their heels in a kind 
of mimic terror, or something akin to feminine skit- 
tishness, with a dim remembrance or tradition, as it 
were, of their having come of a wild stock. They 
have so long been fed and protected by man, that 
they must have, lost many of their native instincts, 
and, I suppose, could not live comfortably through 
even an English winter without human help. One is 
sensible of a gentle scorn at them for such depen- 
dency, but feels none the less kindly disposed towards 
the half -domesticated race ; and it may have been his 
observation of these tamer characteristics in the Char- 
lecote herd that suggested to Shakespeare the tender 
and pitiful description of a wounded stag, in " As You 
Like It." 

At a distance of some hundreds of yards from 
Charlecote Hall, and almost hidden by the trees be- 
tween it and the roadside, is an old brick archway 
and porter's lodge. In connection with this entrance 
there appears to have been a wall and an ancient 
moat, the latter of which is still visible, a shallow, 
grassy scoop along the base of an embankment of the 
lawn. About fifty yards within the gateway stands 
the house, forming three sides of a square, with three 
gables in a row on the front, and on each of the two 
wings ; and there are several towers and turrets at the 
angles, together with projecting windows, antique bal- 
conies, and other quaint ornaments suitable to the half- 
Gothic taste in which the edifice was built. Over the 
gateway is the Lucy coat of arms, emblazoned in its 
proper colors. The mansion dates from the early 
days of Elizabeth, and probably looked very much 
the same as now when Shakespeare was brought be- 

VOL. VII. 10 



146 RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 

fore Sir Thomas Lucy for outrages among his deer. 
The impression is not that of gray antiquity, but of 
stable and time-honored gentility, still as vital as ever. 
It is a most delightful place. All about the house 
and domain there is a perfection of comfort and do- 
mestic taste, an amplitude of convenience, which could 
have been brought about only by the slow ingenuity 
and labor of many successive generations, intent upon 
adding all possible improvement to the home where 
years gone by and years to come give a sort of per- 
manence to the intangible present. An American is 
sometimes tempted to fancy that only by this long 
process can real homes be produced. One man's life- 
time is not enough for the accomplishment of such a 
work of art and nature, almost the greatest merely 
temporary one that is confided to him ; too little, at 
any rate, — yet perhaps too long when he is discour- 
aged by the idea that he must make his house warm 
and delightful for a miscellaneous race of successors, 
of whom the one thing certain is, that his own grand- 
children will not be among them. Such repinings as 
are here suggested, however, come only from the fact, 
that, bred in English habits of thought, as most of us 
are, we have not yet modified our instincts to the 
necessities of our new forms of life. A lodging in a 
wigwam or under a tent has really as many advan- 
tages, when we come to know them, as a home beneath 
the roof-tree of Cliarlecote Hall. But, alas ! our phi- 
losophers have not yet taught us what is best, nor have 
our poets sung us what is beautifullest, in the kind of 
life that we must lead; and therefore we still read 
the old English wisdom, and harp upon the ancient 
strings. And thence it happens, that, when we look 
at a time-honored hall, it seems more possible for men 



RECOLLECTIONS OF A GIFTED WOMAN. 147 

who inherit such a home, than for ourselves, to lead 
noble and graceful lives, quietly doing good and lovely 
things as their daily work, and achieving deeds of 
simple greatness when circumstances require them. I 
sometimes apprehend that our institutions may perish 
before we shall have discovered the most precious of 
the possibilities which they involve. 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 

After my first visit to Leamington Spa, I went by 
an indirect route to Lichfield, and put up at the Black 
Swan. Had I known where to find it, I would much 
rather have established myself at the inn formerly 
kept by the worthy Mr. Boniface, so famous for his 
ale in Farquhar's time. The Black Swan is an old- 
fashioned hotel, its street-front being penetrated by an 
arched passage, in either side of which is an entrance- 
door to the different parts of the house, and through 
which, and over the large stones of its pavement, all 
vehicles and horsemen rumble and clatter into an en- 
closed court-yard, with a thunderous uproar among the 
contiguous rooms and chambers. I appeared to be 
the only guest of the spacious establishment, but may 
have had a few fellow-lodgers hidden in their separate 
parlors, and utterly eschewing that community of in- 
terests which is the characteristic feature of life in an 
American hotel. At any rate, I had the great, dull, 
dingy, and dreary coffee-room, with its heavy old ma- 
hogany chairs and tables, all to myself, and not a 
soul to exchange a word with, except the waiter, who, 
like most of his class in England, had evidently left 
his conversational abilities uncultivated. No former 
practice of solitary living, nor habits of reticence, nor 
well-tested self-dependence for occupation of mind and 
amusement, can quite avail, as I now proved, to dissi- 
pate the ponderous gloom of an English coffee-room 
imder such circumstances as these, with no book at 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 149 

hand save the county-directory, nor any newspaper 
but a torn local journal of five days ago. So I buried 
myself, betimes, in a huge heap of ancient feathers 
(there is no other kind of bed in these old inns), let 
my head sink into an unsubstantial pillow, and slept 
a stifled sleep, infested with such a fragmentary con- 
fusion of dreams that I took them to be a medley, 
compounded of the night-troubles of all my prede- 
cessors in that same unrestful couch. And when I 
awoke, the musty odor of a by-gone century was in my 
nostrils, — a faint, elusive smell, of which I never had 
any conception before crossing the Atlantic. 

In the morning, after a mutton-chop and a cup of 
chiccory in the dusky coffee-room, I went forth and 
bewildered myself a little while among the crooked 
streets, in quest of one or two objects that had chiefly 
attracted me to the spot. The city is of very ancient 
date, and its name in the old Saxon tongue has a dis- 
mal import that would apply well, in these days and 
forever henceforward, to many an unhappy locality in 
our native land. Lichfield signifies " The Field of the 
Dead Bodies," — an epithet, however, which the town 
did not assume in remembrance of a battle, but which 
probably sprung up by a natural process, like a sprig 
of rue or other funereal weed, out of the graves of two 
princely brothers, sons of a pagan king of Mercia, 
who were converted by St. Chad, and afterwards mar- 
tyred for their Christian faith. Nevertheless, I was 
but little interested in the legends of the remote an- 
tiquity of Lichfield, being drawn thither partly to see 
its beautiful cathedral, and still more, I believe, be- 
cause it was the birthplace of Dr. Johnson, with whose 
sturdy English character I became acquainted, at a 
very early period of my life, through the good offices 



150 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 

of Mr. Boswell. In truth, he seems as familiar to my 
recollection, and almost as vivid in his personal as- 
pect to my mind's eye, as the kindly figure of my own 
grandfather. It is only a solitary child, — left much 
to such wild modes of culture as he chooses for him- 
self while yet ignorant what culture means, standing 
on tiptoe to pull down books from no very lofty shelf, 
and then shutting himself up, as it were, between the 
leaves, going astray through the volume at his own 
pleasure, and comprehending it rather by his sensibil- 
ities and affections than his intellect, — that child is 
the only student that ever gets the sort of intimacy 
which I am now thinking of, with a literary personage. 
I do not remember, indeed, ever caring much about 
any of the stalwart Doctor's grandiloquent productions, 
except his two stern and masculine poems, "London," 
and " The Vanity of Human Wishes ; " it was as a 
man, a talker, and a humorist, that I knew and loved 
him, appreciating many of his qualities perhaps more 
thoroughly than I do now, though never seeking to 
put my instinctive perception of his character into 
language. 

Beyond all question, I might have had a wiser 
friend than he. The atmosphere in which alone he 
breathed was dense ; his awful dread of death showed 
how much muddy imperfection was to be cleansed out 
of him, before he could be capable of spiritual exist- 
ence; he meddled only with the surface of life, and 
never cared to penetrate further than to ploughshare 
depth ; his very sense and sagacity were but a one-eyed 
clear-sightedness. I laughed at him, sometimes, stand- 
ing beside his knee. And yet, considering that my na- 
tive propensities were towards Fairy Land, and also 
how much yeast is generally mixed up with the mental 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 1.51 

sustenance of a New-Englander, it may not have been 
altogether amiss, in those childish and boyish days, to 
keep pace with this heavy-footed traveller, and feed on 
the gross diet that he carried in his knapsack. It is 
wholesome food even now. And, then, how English ! 
Many of the latent sympathies that enabled me to en- 
joy the Old Country so well, and that so readily amal- 
gamated themselves with the American ideas that 
seemed most adverse to them, may have been derived 
from, or fostered and kept alive by, the great English 
moralist. Never was a descriptive epithet more nicely 
appropriate than that! Dr. Johnson's morality was 
as English an article as a beefsteak. 

The city of Lichfield (only the cathedral-towns are 
called cities in England) stands on an ascending site. 
It has not so many old gabled houses as Coventry, 
for example, but still enough to gratify an American 
appetite for the antiquities of domestic architecture. 
The people, too, have an old-fashioned way with them, 
and stare at the passing visitor, as if the railway 
had not yet quite accustomed them to the novelty of 
strange faces moving along their ancient sidewalks. 
The old women whom I met, in several instances, 
dropt me a courtesy ; and as they were of decent and 
comfortable exterior, and kept quietly on their way 
without pause or further greeting, it certainly was not 
allowable to interpret their little act of respect as a 
modest method of asking for sixpence ; so that I had 
the pleasure of considering it a remnant of the rev- 
erential and hospitable manners of elder times, when 
the rare presence of a stranger might be deemed worth 
a general acknowledgment. Positively, coming from 
such humble sources, I took it all the more as a wel- 
come on behalf of the inhabitants, and would not have 



152 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 

exchanged it for an invitation from the mayor and 
magistrates to a public dinner. Yet I wish, merely 
for the experiment's sake, that I could have embold- 
ened myself to hold out the aforesaid sixpence to at 
least one of the old ladies. 

In my wanderings about town, I came to an artifi- 
cial piece of water, called the Minster Pool. It fills 
the immense cavity in a ledge of rock, whence the 
building-materials of the cathedral were quarried out 
a great many centuries ago. I should never have 
guessed the little lake to be of man's creation, so very 
pretty and quietly picturesque an object has it grown 
to be, with its green banks, and the old trees hanging 
over its glassy surface, in which you may see reflected 
some of the battlements of the majestic structure that 
once lay here in unshaped stone. Some little children 
stood on the edge of the Pool, angling with pin-hooks ; 
and the scene reminded me (though really, to be quite 
fair with the reader, the gist of the analogy has now 
escaped me) of that mysterious lake in the Arabian 
Nights, which had once been a palace and a city, and 
where a fisherman used to pull out the former inhabi- 
tants in the guise of enchanted fishes. There is no 
need of fanciful associations to make the spot interest- 
ing. It was in the porch of one of the houses, in the 
street that runs beside the Minster Pool, that Lord 
Brooke was slain, in the time of the Parliamentary 
war, by a shot from the battlements of the cathedral, 
which was then held by the Royalists as a fortress. 
The incident is commemorated by an inscription on a 
stone, inlaid into the wall of the house. 

I know not what rank the Cathedral of Lichfield 
holds among its sister edifices in England, as a piece 
of magnificent architecture. Except that of Chester 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 153 

(the grim and simple nave of which stands yet unri- 
valled in my memory), and one or two small ones in 
North Wales, hardly worthy of the name of cathe- 
drals, it was the first that I had seen. To my unin- 
structed vision, it seemed the object best worth gaz- 
ing at in the whole world ; and now, after beholding 
a great many more, I remember it with less prodigal 
admiration only because others are as magnificent as 
itself. The traces remaining in my memory represent 
it as airy rather than massive. A multitude of beau- 
tiful shapes appeared to be comprehended within its 
single outline ; it was a kind of kaleidoscopic mys- 
tery so rich a variety of aspects did it assume from 
each altered point of view, through the presentation 
of a different face, and the rearrangement of its peaks 
and pinnacles and the three battlemented towers, with 
the spires that shot heavenward from all three, but 
one loftier than its fellows. Thus it impressed you, 
at every change, as a newly created structure of the 
passing moment, in which yet you lovingly recognized 
the half-vanished structure of the instant before, and 
felt, moreover, a joyful faith in the indestructible ex- 
istence of all this cloudlike vicissitude. A Gothic ca- 
thedral is surely the most wonderful work which mor- 
tal man has yet achieved, so vast, so intricate, and so 
profoundly simple, with such strange, delightful re- 
cesses in its grand figure, so difficult to comprehend 
within one idea, and yet all so consonant that it ulti- 
mately draws the beholder and his universe into its 
harmony. It is the only thing in the world that is 
vast enough and rich enough. 

Not that I felt, or was worthy to feel, an unmingled 
enjoyment in gazing at this wonder. I could not ele- 
vate myself to its spiritual height, any more than I 



154 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 

could have climbed from the ground to the summit of 
one of its pinnacles. Ascending but a little way, I 
continually fell back and lay in a kind of despair, 
conscious that a flood of uncomprehended beauty was 
pouring down upon me, of which I could appropriate 
only the minutest portion. After a hundred years s 
incalculably as my higher sympathies might be invig- 
orated by so divine an employment, I should still be a 
gazer from below and at an awful distance, as yet re- 
motely excluded from the interior mystery. But it 
was something gained, even to have that painful sense 
of my own limitations, and that half -smothered yearn- 
ing to soar beyond them. The cathedral showed me 
how earthly I was, but yet whispered deeply of im- 
mortality. After all, this was probably the best les- 
son that it could bestow, and, taking it as thoroughly 
as possible home to my heart, I was fain to be con- 
tent. If the truth must be told, my ill-trained enthu- 
siasm soon flagged, and I began to lose the vision of 
a spiritual or ideal edifice behind the time-worn and 
weather-stained front of the actual structure. When- 
ever that is the case, it is most reverential to look 
another way ; but the mood disposes one to minute 
investigation, and I took advantage of it to examine 
the intricate and multitudinous adornment that was 
lavished on the exterior wall of this great church. 
Everywhere, there were empty niches where statues 
bad been thrown down, and here and there a statue 
still lingered in its niche ; and over the chief entrance, 
and extending across the whole breadth of the build- 
ing, was a row of angels, sainted personages, martyrs, 
and kings, sculptured in reddish stone. Being much 
corroded by the moist English atmosphere, during 
four or five hundred winters that they had stood there, 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 155 

these benign and majestic figures perversely put me 
in mind of the appearance of a sugar image, after a 
child has been holding it in his mouth. The vener- 
able infant Time has evidently found them sweet 
morsels. 

Inside of the Minster there is a long and lofty nave, 
transepts of the same height, and side-aisles and chap- 
els, dim nooks of holiness, where in Catholic times the 
lamps were continually burning before the richly dec- 
orated shrines of saints. In the audacity of my igno- 
rance, as I humbly acknowledge it to have been, I 
criticised this great interior as too much broken into 
compartments, and shorn of half its rightful impres- 
siveness by the interposition of a screen betwixt the 
nave and chancel. It did not spread itself in breadth, 
but ascended to the roof in lofty narrowness. One 
large body of worshippers might have knelt down in 
the nave, others in each of the transepts, and smaller 
ones in the side-aisles, besides an indefinite number of 
esoteric enthusiasts in the mysterious sanctities beyond 
the screen. Thus it seemed to typify the exclusiveness 
of sects, rather than the world-wide hospitality of gen- 
uine religion. I had imagined a cathedral with a scope 
more vast. These Gothic aisles, with their groined 
arches overhead, supported by clustered pillars in long 
vistas up and down, were venerable and magnificent, 
but included too much of the twilight of that monkish 
gloom out of which they grew. It is no matter whether 
I ever came to a more satisfactory appreciation of this 
kind of architecture ; the only value of my strictures 
being to show the folly of looking at noble objects in 
the wrong mood, and the absurdity of a new visitant 
pretending to hold any opinion whatever on such sub- 
jects, instead of surrendering himself to the old build- 
er's influence with childlike simplicity. 



156 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 

A great deal of white marble decorates the old stone- 
work of the aisles, in the shape of altars, obelisks, sar- 
cophagi, and busts. Most of these memorials are com- 
memorative of people locally distinguished, especially 
the deans and canons of the Cathedral, with their rel- 
atives and families ; and I found but two monuments 
of personages whom I had ever heard of, — one being 
Gilbert Walmesley and the other Lady Mary Wortley 
Montagu, a literary acquaintance of my boyhood. It 
was really pleasant to meet her there ; for after a friend 
has lain in the grave far into the second century, she 
would be unreasonable to require any melancholy emo- 
tions in a chance interview at her tombstone. It adds 
a rich charm to sacred edifices, this time-honored cus- 
tom of burial in churches, after a few years, at least, 
when the mortal remains have turned to dust beneath 
the pavement, and the quaint devices and inscriptions 
still speak to you above. The statues, that stood or 
reclined in several recesses of the Cathedral, had a 
kind of life, and I regarded them with an odd sort of 
deference, as if they were privileged denizens of the 
precinct. It was singular, too, how the memorial of 
the latest buried person, the man whose features were 
familiar in the streets of Lichfield only yesterday, 
seemed precisely as much at home here as his mediae- 
val predecessors. Henceforward he belonged to the 
Cathedral like one of its original pillars. Methought 
this impression in my fancy might be the shadow of a 
spiritual fact. The dying melt into the great multi- 
tude of the Departed as quietly as a drop of water 
into the ocean, and, it may be, are conscious of no un- 
familiarity with their new circumstances, but immedi- 
ately become aware of an insufferable strangeness in 
the world which they have quitted. Death has not 
taken them away, but brought them home. 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 157 

The vicissitudes and riiischances of sublunary af- 
fairs, however, have not ceased to attend upon these 
marble inhabitants ; for I saw the upper fragment of 
a sculptured lady, in a very old-fashioned garb, the 
lower half of whom had doubtless been demolished by 
Cromwell's soldiers when they took the Minster by 
storm. And there lies the remnant of this devout lady 
on her slab, ever since the outrage, as for centuries 
before, with a countenance of divine serenity, and her 
hands clasped in prayer, symbolizing a depth of relig- 
ious faith which no earthly turmoil or calamity could 
disturb. Another piece of sculpture (apparently a fa- 
vorite subject in the Middle Ages, for I have seen sev- 
eral like it in other cathedrals) was a reclining skele- 
ton, as faithfully representing an open-work of bones 
as could well be expected in a solid block of marble, 
and at a period, moreover, when the mysteries of the 
human frame were rather to be guessed at than re- 
vealed. Whatever the anatomical defects of his pro- 
duction, the old sculptor had succeeded in making it 
ghastly beyond measure. How much mischief has 
been wrought upon us by this invariable gloom of the 
Gothic imagination ; flinging itself like a death-scented 
pall over our conceptions of the future state, smother- 
ing our hopes, hiding our sky, and inducing dismal ef- 
forts to raise the harvest of immortality out of what is 
most opposite to it, — the grave ! 

The cathedral service is performed twice every day : 
at ten o'clock and at four. When I first entered, the 
choristers (young and old, but mostly, I think, boys, 
with voices inexpressibly sweet and clear, and as fresh 
as bird-notes) were just winding up their harmonious 
labors, and soon came thronging through a side-door 
from the chancel into the nave. They were all dressed 



158 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 

in long white robes, and lodked like a peculiar order of 
beings, created on purpose to hover between the roof 
and pavement of that dim, consecrated edifice, and il- 
luminate it with divine melodies, reposing themselves, 
meanwhile, on the heavy grandeur of the organ-tones 
like cherubs on a golden cloud. All at once, however, 
one of the cherubic multitude pulled off his white 
gown, thus transforming himself before my very eyes 
into a commonplace youth of the day, in modern frock- 
coat and trousers of a decidedly provincial cut. This 
absurd little incident, I verily believe, had a sinister 
effect in putting me at odds with the proper influences 
of the Cathedral, nor could I quite recover a suitable 
frame of mind during my stay there. But, emerging 
into the open air, I began to be sensible that I had 
left a magnificent interior behind me, and I have never 
quite lost the perception and enjoyment of it in these 
intervening years. 

A large space in the immediate neighborhood of the 
Cathedral- is called the Close, and comprises beauti- 
fully kept lawns and a shadowy walk bordered by the 
dwellings of the ecclesiastical dignitaries of the dio- 
cese. All this row of episcopal, canonical, and cler- 
ical residences has an air of the deepest quiet, repose, 
and well-protected though not inaccessible seclusion. 
They seemed capable of including everything that a 
saint could desire, and a great many more things than 
most of us sinners generally succeed in acquiring. 
Their most marked feature is a dignified comfort, 
looking as if no disturbance or vulgar intrusiveness 
could ever cross their thresholds, encroach upon their 
ornamented lawns, or straggle into- the beautiful gar- 
dens that surround them with flower-beds and rich 
clumps of shrubbery. The episcopal palace is a stately 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 159 

mansion of stone, built somewhat in the Italian style, 
and bearing on its front the figures 1687, as the date 
of its erection. A large edifice of brick, which, if I 
remember, stood next to the palace, I took to be the 
residence of the second dignitary of the Cathedral ; 
and, in that case, it must have been the youthful 
home of Addison, whose father was Dean of Lich- 
field. I tried to fancy his figure on the delightful 
walk that extends in front of those priestly abodes, 
from which and the interior lawns it is separated by 
an open-work iron fence, lined with rich old shrub- 
bery, and overarched by a minster-aisle of venerable 
trees. This path is haunted by the shades of famous 
personages who have formerly trodden it. Johnson 
must have been familiar with it, both as a boy, and 
in his subsequent visits to Lichfield, an illustrious old 
man. Miss Seward, connected with so many literary 
reminiscences, lived in one of the adjacent houses. 
Tradition says that it was a favorite spot of Major 
Andre, who used to pace to and fro under these trees, 
waiting, perhaps, to catch a last angel-glimpse of Ho- 
noria Sneyd, before he crossed the ocean to encoun- 
ter his dismal doom from an American court-martial. 
David Garrick, no doubt, scampered along the path 
in his boyish days, and, if he was an early student of 
the drama, must often have thought of those two airy 
characters of the " Beaux' Stratagem," Archer and 
Aimwtll, who, on this very ground, after attending 
service at the Cathedral, contrive to make acquaint- 
ance with the ladies of the comedy. These creatures 
of mere fiction have as positive a substance now as 
the sturdy old figure of Johnson himself. They live, 
while realities have died. The shadowy walk still 
glistens with their gold-embroidered memories. 



160 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 

Seeking for Johnson's birthplace, I found it in St. 
Mary's Square, which is not so much a square as the 
mere widening of a street. The house is tall and thin, 
of three stories, with a square front and a roof rising 
steep and high. On a side-view, the building looks as 
if it had been cut in two in the midst, there being no 
slope of the roof on that side. A ladder slanted 
against the wall, and a painter was giving a livelier 
hue to the plaster. In a corner-room of the basement, 
where old Michael Johnson may be supposed to have 
sold books, is now what we should call a dry-goods 
store, or, according to the English phrase, a mercer's 
and haberdasher's shop. The house has a private en- 
trance on a cross-street, the door being accessible by 
several much-worn stone steps, which are bordered by 
an iron balustrade. I set my foot on the steps and laid 
my hand on the balustrade, where Johnson's hand and 
foot must many a time have been, and ascending to the 
door, I knocked once, and again, and again, and got 
no admittance. Going round to the shop- entrance, 1 
tried to open it, but found it as fast bolted as the gate 
of Paradise. It is mortifying to be so balked in one's 
little enthusiasms ; but looking round in quest of some- 
body to make inquiries of, I was a good deal consoled 
by the sight of Dr. Johnson himself, who happened, 
just at that moment, to be sitting at his ease nearly in 
the middle of St. Mary's Square, with his face turned 
towards his father's house. 

Of course, it being almost fourscore years since the 
Doctor laid aside his weary bulk of flesh, together 
with the ponderous melancholy that had so long 
weighed him down, the intelligent reader will at once 
comprehend that he was marble in his substance, and 
seated in a marble chair, on an elevated stone pedes* 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 161 

tal. In short, it was a statue, sculptured by Lucas, 
and placed here in 1838, at the expense of Dr. Law, 
the reverend chancellor of the diocese. 

The figure is colossal (though perhaps not much 
more so than the mountainous Doctor himself) and 
looks down upon the spectator from its pedestal of ten 
or twelve feet high, with a broad and heavy benignity 
of aspect, very like in feature to Sir Joshua Rey- 
nolds's portrait of Johnson, but calmer and sweeter 
in expression. Several big books are piled up beneath 
his chair, and, if I mistake not, he holds a volume in 
his hand, thus blinking forth at the world out of his 
learned abstraction, owl-like, yet benevolent at heart. 
The statue is immensely massive, a vast ponderosity 
of stone, not finely spiritualized, nor, indeed, fully 
humanized, but rather resembling a great stone-bowl- 
der than a man. You must look with the eyes of 
faith and sympathy, or, possibly, you might lose the 
human being altogether, and find only a big stone 
within your mental grasp. On the pedestal are three 
bas-reliefs. In the first, Johnson is represented as 
hardly more than a baby, bestriding an old man's 
shoulders, resting his chin on the bald head, which he 
embraces with his little arms, and listening earnestly 
to the High-Church eloquence of Dr. Sacheverell. In 
the second tablet, he is seen riding to school on the 
shoulders of two of his comrades, while another boy 
supports him in the rear. 

The third bas-relief possesses, to my mind, a great 
deal of pathos, to which my appreciative faculty is 
probably the more alive, because I have always been 
profoundly impressed by the incident here commemo- 
rated, and long ago tried to tell it for the behoof of 
childish readers. It shows Johnson in the market- 

VOL. VII. 11 



162 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 

place of Uttoxeter, doing penance for an act of diso 
bedience to his father, committed fifty years before. 
He stands bareheaded, a venerable figure, and a coun- 
tenance extremely sad and woe-begone, with the wind 
and rain driving hard against him, and thus helping 
to suggest to the spectator the gloom of his inward 
state. Some market-people and children gaze awe- 
stricken into his face, and an aged man and woman, 
with clasped and uplifted hand, seem to be praying 
for him. These latter personages (whose introduc- 
tion by the artist is none the less effective, because, 
in queer proximity, there are some commodities of 
market-day in the shape of living ducks and dead 
poultry) I interpreted to represent the spirits of John- 
son's father and mother, lending what aid they could 
to lighten his half-century's burden of remorse. 

I had never heard of the above-described piece of 
sculpture before ; it appears to have no reputation as 
a work of art, nor am I at all positive that it deserves 
any. For me, however, it did as much as sculpture 
could, under the circumstances, even if the artist of 
the Libyan Sibyl had wrought it, by reviving my in- 
terest in the sturdy old Englishman, and particularly 
by freshening my perception of a wonderful beauty 
and pathetic tenderness in the incident of the penance. 
So, the next day, I left Lichfield for Uttoxeter, on one 
of the few purely sentimental pilgrimages that I ever 
undertook, to see the very spot where Johnson had 
stood. Boswell, I think, speaks of the town (its 
name is pronounced Yuteoxeter) as being about nine 
miles off from Lichfield, but the county-map would 
indicate a greater distance ; and by rail, passing from 
one line to another, it is as much as eighteen miles. 
I have always had an idea of old Michael Johnson 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 163 

sending his literary merchandise by carrier's wagon, 
journeying to Uttoxeter afoot on market-day morning, 
selling books through the busy hours, and returning to 
Lichfield at night. This could not possibly have been 
the case. 

Arriving at the Uttoxeter station, the first objects 
that I saw, with a green field or two between them 
and me, were the tower and gray steeple of a church, 
rising among red-tiled roofs and a few scattered trees. 
A very short walk takes you from the station up into 
the town. It had been my previous impression that 
the market-place of Uttoxeter lay immediately round- 
about the church ; and, if I remember the narrative 
aright, Johnson, or Boswell in his behalf, describes 
his father's book-stall as standing in the market-place, 
close beside the sacred edifice. It is impossible for 
me to say what changes may have occurred in the to- 
pography of the town, during almost a century and a 
half since Michael Johnson retired from business, and 
ninety years, at least, since his son's penance was per- 
formed. But the church has now merely a street of 
ordinary width passing around it, while the market- 
place, though near at hand, neither forms a part of 
it nor is really contiguous, nor would its throng and 
bustle be apt to overflow their boundaries and surge 
against the churchyard and the old gray tower. Never- 
theless, a walk of a minute or two brings a person 
from the centre of the market-place to the church- 
door ; and Michael Johnson might very conveniently 
have located his stall and laid out his literary ware in 
the corner at the tower's base ; better there, indeed, 
than in the busy centre of an agricultural market. But 
the picturesque arrangement and full impressiveness 
of the story absolutely require that Johnson shall not 



164 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 

have done his penance in a corner, ever so little re- 
tired, but shall have been the very nucleus of the 
crowd, — the midmost man of the market-place, — a 
central image of Memory and Remorse, contrasting 
with and overpowering the petty materialism around 
him. He himself, having the force to throw vitality 
and truth into what persons differently constituted 
might reckon a mere external ceremony, and an ab- 
surd one, could not have failed to see this necessity. 
I am resolved, therefore, that the true site of Dr. 
Johnson's penance was in the middle of the market- 
place. 

That important portion of the town is a rather 
spacious and irregularly shaped vacuity, surrounded 
by houses and shops, some of them old, with red-tiled 
roofs, others wearing a pretence of newness, but prob- 
ably as old in their inner substance as the rest. The 
people of Uttoxeter seemed very idle in the warm 
summer-day, and were scattered in little groups along 
the sidewalks, leisurely chatting with one another, and 
often turning about to take a deliberate stare at my 
humble self ; insomuch that I felt as if my genuine 
sympathy for the illustrious penitent, and my many 
reflections about him, must have imbued me with some 
of his own singularity of mien. If their great-grand- 
fathers were such redoubtable starers in the Doctor's 
day, his penance was no light one. This curiosity in- 
dicates a paucity of visitors to the little town, except 
for market purposes, and I question if Uttoxeter ever 
saw an American before. The only other thing that 
greatly impressed me was the abundance of public- 
houses, one at every step or two : Red Lions, White 
Harts, Bulls' Heads, Mitres, Cross Keys, and I know 
not what besides. These are probably for the accom. 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 165 

modation of the farmers and peasantry of the neigh- 
borhood on market-day, and content themselves with a 
very meagre business on other days of the week. At 
any rate, I was the only guest in Uttoxeter at the 
period of my visit, and had but an infinitesimal por- 
tion of patronage to distribute among such a multitude 
of inns. The reader, however, will possibly be scan- 
dalized to learn what was the first, and, indeed, the 
only important affair that I attended to, after coming 
so far to indulge a solemn and high emotion, and 
standing now on the very spot where my pious errand 
should have been consummated. I stepped into one of 
the rustic hostleries and got my dinner, — bacon and 
greens, some mutton-chops, juicier and more delec- 
table than all America could serve up at the President's 
table, and a gooseberry pudding ; a sufficient meal for 
six yeomen, and good enough for a prince, besides a 
pitcher of foaming ale, the whole at the pitiful small 
charge of eighteen-pence ! 

Dr. Johnson would have forgiven me, for nobody 
had a heartier faith in beef and mutton than himself. 
And as regards my lack of sentiment in eating my 
dinner, — it was the wisest thing I had done that day. 
A sensible man had better not let himself be betrayed 
into these attempts to realize the things which he has 
dreamed about, and which, when they cease to be 
purely ideal in his mind, will have lost the truest of 
their truth, the loftiest and profoundest part of their 
power over his sympathies. Facts, as we really find 
them, whatever poetry they may involve, are covered 
with a stony excrescence of prose, resembling the crust 
on a beautiful sea-shell, and they never show their 
most delicate and divinest colors until we shall have 
dissolved away their grosser actualities by steeping 



166 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 

them long in a powerful menstruum of thought. And 
seeking to actualize them again, we do but renew the 
crust. If this were otherwise, — if the moral sublimity 
of a great fact depended in any degree on its garb of 
external circumstances, things which change and decay, 
— it could not itself be immortal and ubiquitous, and 
only a brief point of time and a little neighborhood 
would be spiritually nourished by its grandeur and 
beauty. 

Such were a few of the reflections which I mingled 
with my ale, as I remember to have seen an old quaffer 
of that excellent liquor stir up his cup with a sprig of 
some bitter and fragrant herb. Meanwhile I found 
myself still haunted by a desire to get a definite result 
out of my visit to Uttoxeter. The hospitable inn was 
called the Nag's Head, and, standing beside the mar- 
ket-place, was as likely as any other to have enter- 
tained old Michael Johnson in the days when he used 
to come hither to sell books. He, perhaps, had dined 
on bacon and greens, and drunk his ale, and smoked 
his pipe, in the very room where I now sat, which was 
a low, ancient room, certainly much older than Queen 
Anne's time, with a red-brick floor, and a white-washed 
ceiling, traversed by bare, rough beams, the whole in 
the rudest fashion, but extremely neat. Neither did 
it lack ornament, the walls being hung with colored en- 
gravings of prize oxen and other pretty prints, and the 
mantel-piece adorned with earthen-ware figures of shep- 
herdesses in the Arcadian taste of long ago. Michael 
Johnson's eyes might have rested on that self-same 
earthen image, to examine which more closely I had 
just crossed the brick pavement of the room. And, 
sitting down again, still as I sipped my ale, I glanced 
through the open window into the sunny market-place^ 



LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 167 

and wished that I could honestly fix on one spot rather 
than another, as likely to have been the holy site where 
Johnson stood to do his penance. 

How strange and stupid it is that tradition should not 
have marked and kept in mind the very place ! How 
shameful (nothing less than that) that there should 
be no local memorial of this incident, as beautiful and 
touching a passage as can be cited out of any human 
life ! No inscription of it, almost as sacred as a verse 
of Scripture on the wall of the church ! No statue of 
the venerable and illustrious penitent in the market- 
place to throw a wholesome awe over its earthliness, 
its frauds and petty wrongs, of which the benumbed 
fingers of conscience can make no record, its selfish 
competition of each man with his brother or his neigh- 
bor, its traffic of soul - substance for a little worldly 
gain ! Such a statue, if the piety of the people did 
not raise it, might almost have been expected to grow 
up out of the pavement of its own accord on the spot 
that had been watered by the rain that dripped from 
Johnson's garments, mingJed with his remorseful tears. 

Long after my visit to Uttoxeter, I was told that 
there were individuals in the town who could have 
shown me the exact, indubitable spot where Johnson 
performed his penance. I was assured, moreover, that 
sufficient interest was felt in the subject to have in- 
duced certain local discussions as to the expediency of 
erecting a memorial. With all deference to my polite 
informant, I surmise that there is a mistake, and de- 
cline, without further and precise evidence, giving 
credit to either of the above statements. The inhab- 
itants know nothing, as a matter of general interest, 
about the penance, and care nothing for the scene of 
it. If the clergyman of the parish, for example, had 



168 LICHFIELD AND UTTOXETER. 

ever heard of it, would he not have used the theme 
time and again, wherewith to work tenderly and pro- 
foundly on the souls committed to his charge? If 
parents were familiar with it, would they not teach it 
to their young ones at the fireside, both to insure rev- 
erence to their own gray hairs, and to protect the chil- 
dren from such unavailing regrets as Johnson bore 
upon his heart for fifty years ? If the site were ascer- 
tained, would not the pavement thereabouts be worn 
with reverential footsteps? Would not every town- 
born child be able to direct the pilgrim thither ? While 
waiting at the station, before my departure, I asked a 
boy who stood near me, — an intelligent and gentle- 
manly lad twelve or thirteeen years old, whom I should 
take to be a clergyman's son, — I asked him if he had 
ever heard the story of Dr. Johnson, how he stood an 
hour doing penance near that church, the spire of 
which rose before us. The boy stared and answered, — 

"No!" 

" Were you born in Uttoxeter ? " 

« Yes." 

I inquired if no circumstance such as I had men- 
tioned was known or talked about among the inhab- 
itants. 

" No," said the boy ; " not that I ever heard of." 

Just think of the absurd little town, knowing noth- 
ing of the only memorable incident which ever hap- 
pened within its boundaries since the old Britons built 
it, this sad and lovely story, which consecrates the spot 
(for I found it holy to my contemplation, again, as 
soon as it lay behind me) in the heart of a stranger 
from three thousand miles over the sea ! It but con- 
firms what I have been saying, that sublime and beau 
tiful facts are best understood when etherealized by 
distance. 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

We set out at a little past eleven, and made our 
first stage to Manchester. We were by this time suf- 
ficiently Anglicized to reckon the morning a bright 
and sunny one ; although the May sunshine was min- 
gled with water, as it were, and distempered with a 
very bitter east-wind. 

Lancashire is a dreary county (all, at least, except 
its hilly portions), and I have never passed through it 
without wishing myself anywhere but in that particu- 
lar spot where I then happened to be. A few places 
along our route were historically interesting ; as, for 
example, Bolton, which was the scene of many remark- 
able events in the Parliamentary War, and in the 
market - square of which one of the Earls of Derby 
was beheaded. We saw, along the wayside, the never- 
failing green fields, hedges, and other monotonous fea- 
tures of an ordinary English landscape. There were 
little factory villages, too, or larger towns, with their 
tall chimneys, and their pennons of black smoke, their 
ugliness of brick-work, and their heaps of refuse mat- 
ter from the furnace, which seems to be the only kind 
of stuff which Nature cannot take back to herself and 
resolve into the elements, when man has thrown it 
aside. These hillocks of waste and effete mineral al- 
ways disfigure the neighborhood of iron - mongering 
towns, and, even after a considerable antiquity, are 
hardly made decent with a little grass. 

At a quarter to two we left Manchester by the Shef- 



170 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

field and Lincoln Railway. The scenery grew rather 
better than that through which we had hitherto passed, 
though still by no means very striking ; for (except 
in the show - districts, such as the Lake country, or 
Derbyshire) English scenery is not particularly well 
worth looking at, considered as a spectacle or a pic- 
ture. It has a real, homely charm of its own, no 
doubt ; and the rich verdure, and the thorough finish 
added by human art, are perhaps as attractive to an 
American eye as any stronger feature could be. Our 
journey, however, between Manchester and Sheffield 
was not through a rich tract of country, but along 
a valley walled in by bleak, ridgy hills extending 
straight as a rampart, and across black moorlands 
with here and there a plantation of trees. Sometimes 
there were long and gradual ascents, bleak, windy, 
and desolate, conveying the very impression which the 
reader gets from many passages of Miss Bronte's nov- 
els, and still more from those of her two sisters. Old 
stone or brick farm-houses, and, once in a while, an 
old church-tower, were visible ; but these are almost 
too common objects to be noticed in an English land- 
scape. 

On a railway, I suspect, what little we do see of the 
country is seen quite amiss, because it was never in- 
tended to be looked at from any point of view in that 
straight line ; so that it is like looking at the wrong 
side of a piece of tapestry. The old highways and 
foot-paths were as natural as brooks and rivulets, and 
adapted themselves by an inevitable impulse to the 
physiognomy of the country ; and, furthermore, every 
object within view of them had some subtile reference 
to their curves and undulations ; but the line of a rail- 
way is perfectly artificial, and puts all precedent 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 171 

things at sixes-and-sevens. At any rate, be the cause 
what it may, there is seldom anything worth seeing 
within the scope of a railway traveller's eye ; and if 
there were, it requires an alert marksman to take a 
flying shot at the picturesque. 

At one of the stations (it was near a village of an 
cient aspect, nestling round a church, on a wide York- 
shire moor) I saw a tall old lady in black, who seemed 
to have just alighted from the train. She caught my 
attention by a singular movement of the head, not 
once only, but continually repeated, and at regular in- 
tervals, as if she were making a stern and solemn pro- 
test against some action that developed itself before 
her eyes, and were foreboding terrible disaster, if it 
should be persisted in. Of course, it was nothing 
more than a paralytic or nervous affection ; yet one 
might fancy that it had its origin in some unspeakable 
wrong, perpetrated half a lifetime ago in this old gen- 
tlewoman's presence, either against herself or some- 
body whom she loved still better. Her features had 
a wonderful sternness, which, I presume, was caused 
by her habitual effort to compose and keep them 
quiet, and thereby counteract the tendency to para- 
lytic movement. The slow, regular, and inexorable 
character of the motion — her look of force and self- 
control, which had the appearance of rendering it vol- 
untary, while yet it was so fateful — have stamped 
this poor lady's face and gesture into my memory ; so 
that, some dark day or other, I am afraid she will re- 
produce herself in a dismal romance. 

The train stopped a minute or two, to allow the 
tickets to be taken, just before entering the Sheffield 
station, and thence I had a glimpse of the famous 
town of razors and penknives, enveloped in a cloud of 



172 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

its own diffusing. My impressions of it are extremely 
vague and misty, — or rather, smoky : for Sheffield 
seems to me smokier than Manchester, Liverpool, or 
Birmingham, — smokier than all England besides, un- 
less Newcastle be the exception. It might have been 
Pluto's own metropolis, shrouded in sulphurous vapor ; 
and, indeed, our approach to it had been by the Valley 
of the Shadow of Death, through a tunnel three miles 
in length, quite traversing the breadth and depth of a 
mountainous hill. 

After passing Sheffield, the scenery became softer, 
gentler, yet more picturesque. At one point we saw 
what I believe to be the utmost northern verge of 
Sherwood Forest, — not consisting, however, of thou- 
sand-year oaks, extant from Robin Hood's days, but 
of young and thriving plantations, which will require 
a century or two of slow English growth to give them 
much breadth of shade. Earl Fitzwilliam's property 
lies in this neighborhood, and probably his castle was 
hidden among some soft depth of foliage not far off. 
Farther onward the country grew quite level around 
us, whereby I judged that we must now be in Lin- 
colnshire ; and shortly after six o'clock we caught the 
first glimpse of the cathedral towers, though they 
loomed scarcely huge enough for our preconceived 
idea of them. But, as we drew nearer, the great edi- 
fice began to assert itself, making us acknowledge it 
to be larger than our receptivity could take in. 

At the railway-station we found no cab (it being an 
unknown vehicle in Lincoln), but only an omnibus 
belonging to the Saracen's Head, which the driver rec- 
ommended as the best hotel in the city, and took us 
thither accordingly. It received us hospitably, and 
looked comfortable enough ; though, like the hotels of 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 173 

most old English towns, it had a musty fragrance of 
antiquity, such as I have smelt in a seldom-opened 
London church where the broad-aisle is paved with 
tombstones. The house was of an ancient fashion, the 
entrance into its interior court-yard being through an 
arch, in the side of which is the door of the hotel. 
There are long corridors, an intricate arrangement of 
passages, an up - and - down meandering of staircases, 
amid which it would be no marvel to encounter some 
forgotten guest who had gone astray a hundred years 
ago, and was still seeking for his bedroom while the 
rest of his generation were in their graves. There is 
no exaggerating the confusion of mind that seizes 
upon a stranger in the bewildering geography of a 
great old-fashioned English inn. 

This hotel stands in the principal street of Lincoln, 
and within a very short distance of one of the ancient 
city-gates, which is arched across the public way, with 
a smaller arch for foot-passengers on either side ; the 
whole, a gray, time-gnawn, ponderous, shadowy struc- 
ture, through the dark vista of which you look into the 
Middle Ages. The street is narrow, and retains many 
antique peculiarities ; though, unquestionably, English 
domestic architecture has lost its most impressive fea- 
tures, in the course of the last century. In this re- 
spect, there are finer old towns than Lincoln : Chester, 
for instance, and Shrewsbury, — which last is unusu- 
ally rich in those quaint and stately edifices where the 
gentry of the shire used to make their winter abodes, 
in a provincial metropolis. Almost everywhere, nowa- 
days, there is a monotony of modern brick or stuccoed 
fronts, hiding houses that are older than ever, but ob- 
literating the picturesque antiquity of the street. 

Between seven and eight o'clock (it being still 



174 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

broad daylight in these long English days) we set out 
to pay a preliminary visit to the exterior of the Cathe- 
dral. Passing through the Stone Bow, as the city- 
gate close by is called, we ascended a street which 
grew steeper and narrower as we advanced, till at last 
it got to be the steepest street I ever climbed, — so 
steep that any carriage, if left to itself, would rattle 
downward much faster than it could possibly be drawn 
up. Being almost the only hill in Lincolnshire, the 
inhabitants seem disposed to make the most of it. The 
houses on each side had no very remarkable aspect, 
except one with a stone portal and carved ornaments, 
which is now a dwelling-place for poverty-stricken 
people, but may have been an aristocratic abode in 
the days of the Norman kings, to whom its style of 
architecture dates back. This is called the Jewess's 
House, having been inhabited by a woman of that 
faith who was hanged six hundred years ago. 

And still the street grew steeper and steeper. Cer- 
tainly, the Bishop and clergy of Lincoln ought not to 
be fat men, but of very spiritual, saint-like, almost 
angelic habit, if it be a frequent part of their ecclesias- 
tical duty to climb this hill ; for it is a real penance, 
and was probably performed as such, and groaned 
over accordingly, in monkish times. Formerly, on 
the day of his installation, the Bishop used to ascend 
the hill barefoot, and was doubtless cheered and invig- 
orated by looking upward to the grandeur that was 
to console him for the humility of his approach. We, 
likewise, were beckoned onward by glimpses of the ca- 
thedral towers ; and, finally, attaining an open square 
on the summit, we saw an old Gothic gateway to the 
left hand, and another to the right. The latter had 
apparently been a part of the exterior defences of 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 175 

the Cathedral, at a time when the edifice was fortified. 
The west front rose behind. We passed through one 
of the side-arches of the Gothic portal, and found our- 
selves in the Cathedral Close, a wide, level space, 
where the great old Minster has fair room to sit, look- 
ing down on the ancient structures that surround it, 
all of which, in former days, were the habitations of 
its dignitaries and officers. Some of them are still oc- 
cupied as such, though others are in too neglected and 
dilapidated a state to seem worthy of so splendid an 
establishment. Unless it be Salisbury Close, however 
(which is incomparably rich as regards the old resi- 
dences that belong to it), I remember no more com- 
fortably picturesque precincts round any other cathe- 
dral. But, in truth, almost every cathedral close, in 
turn, has seemed to me the loveliest, cosiest, safest, 
least wind-shaken, most decorous, and most enjoyable 
shelter that ever the thrift and selfishness of mortal 
man contrived for himself. How delightful, to com- 
bine all this with the service of the temple ! 

Lincoln Cathedral is built of a yellowish brown- 
stone, which appears either to have been largely re- 
stored, or else does not assume the hoary, crumbly 
surface that gives such a venerable aspect to most of 
the ancient churches and castles in England. In many 
parts, the recent restorations are quite evident ; but 
other, and much the larger portions, can scarcely have 
been touched for centuries : for there are still the gar- 
goyles, perfect, or with broken noses, as the case may 
be, but showing that variety and fertility of grotesque 
extravagance which no modern imitation can effect. 
There are innumerable niches, too, up the whole height 
of the towers, above and around the entrance, and all 
over the walls : most of them empty, but a few con- 



176 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

taining the lamentable remnants of headless saints and 
angels. It is singular what a native animosity lives 
in the human heart against carved images, insomuch 
that, whether they represent Christian saint or Pagan 
deity, all unsophisticated men seize the first safe op- 
portunity to knock off their heads ! In spite of all 
dilapidations, however, the effect of the west front of 
the Cathedral is still exceedingly rich, being covered 
from massive base to airy summit with the minutest 
details of sculpture and carving: at least, it was so 
once ; and even now the spiritual impression of its 
beauty remains so strong, that we have to look twice 
to see that much of it has been obliterated. I have 
seen a cherry-stone carved all over by a monk, so mi- 
nutely that it must have cost him half a lifetime of 
labor; and this cathedral - front seems to have been 
elaborated in a monkish spirit, like that cherry-stone. 
Not that the result is in the least petty, but miracu- 
lously grand, and all the more so for the faithful 
beauty of the smallest details. 

An elderly man, seeing us looking up at the west 
front, came to the door of an adjacent house, and 
called to inquire if we wished to go into the Cathe- 
dral ; but as there would have been a dusky twilight 
beneath its roof, like the antiquity that has sheltered 
itself within, we declined for the present. So we 
merely walked round the exterior, and thought it 
more beautiful than that of York ; though, on recol- 
lection, I hardly deem it so majestic and mighty as 
that. It is vain to attempt a description, or seek even 
to record the feeling which the edifice inspires. It 
does not impress the beholder as an inanimate object, 
but as something that has a vast, quiet, long-enduring 
life of its own, — a creation which man did not build, 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 177 

though in some way or other it is connected with 
him, and kindred to human nature. In short, I fall 
straightway to talking nonsense, when I try to ex- 
press my inner sense of this and other cathedrals. 

While we stood in the close, at the eastern end of 
the Minster, the clock chimed the quarters ; and then 
Great Tom, who hangs in the Rood Tower, told us it 
was eight o'clock, in far the sweetest and mightiest 
accents that I ever heard from any bell, — slow, and 
solemn, and allowing the profound reverberations of 
each stroke to die away before the next one fell. It 
was still broad daylight in that upper region of the 
town, and would be so for some time longer ; but the 
evening atmosphere was getting sharp and cool. We 
therefore descended the steep street, — our younger 
companion running before us, and gathering such 
headway that I fully expected him to break his head 
against some projecting wall. 

In the morning we took a fly (an English term for 
an exceedingly sluggish vehicle), and drove up to the 
Minster by a road rather less steep and abrupt than 
the one we had previously climbed. We alighted be- 
fore the west front, and sent our charioteer in quest 
of the verger ; but, as he was not immediately to be 
found, a young girl let us into the nave. We found 
it very grand, it is needless to say, but not so grand, 
methought, as the vast nave of York Cathedral, es- 
pecially beneath the great central tower of the latter. 
Unless a writer intends a professedly architectural 
description, there is but one set of phrases in which 
to talk of all the cathedrals in England and elsewhere. 
They are alike in their great features : an acre or two 
of stone flags for a pavement ; rows of vast columns 
supporting a vaulted roof at a dusky height ; great 

VOL.. VII. 12 



178 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

windows, sometimes richly bedimmed with ancient 
or modern stained glass ; and an elaborately carved 
screen between the nave and chancel, breaking the 
vista that might else be of such glorious length, and 
which is further choked up by a massive organ, — in 
spite of which obstructions you catch the broad, va- 
riegated glimmer of the painted east window, where 
a hundred saints wear their robes of transfiguration. 
Behind the screen are the carved oaken stalls of the 
Chapter and Prebendaries, the Bishop's throne, the 
pulpit, the altar, and whatever else may furnish out 
the Holy of Holies. Nor must we forget the range of 
chapels (once dedicated to Catholic saints, but which 
have now lost their individual consecration), nor the 
old monuments of kings, warriors, and prelates, in 
the side-aisles of the chancel. In close contiguity to 
the main body of the Cathedral is the Chapter-House, 
which, here at Lincoln, as at Salisbury, is supported 
by one central pillar rising from the floor, and putting 
forth branches like a tree, to hold up the roof. Adja- 
cent to the Chapter-House are the cloisters, extending 
round a quadrangle, and paved with lettered tomb- 
stones, the more antique of which have had their in- 
scriptions half obliterated by the feet of monks taking 
their noontide exercise in these sheltered walks, five 
hundred years ago. Some of these old burial-stones, 
although with ancient crosses engraved upon them, 
have been made to serve as memorials to dead people 
of very recent date. 

In the chancel, among the tombs of forgotten bish- 
ops and knights, we saw an immense slab of stone pur- 
porting to be the monument of Catherine Swynford, 
wife of John of Gaunt ; also, here was the shrine of the 
little Saint Hugh, that Christian child who was fabled 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 179 

to have been crucified by the Jews of Lincoln. The 
Cathedral is not particularly rich in monuments ; for 
it suffered grievous outrage and dilapidation, both at 
the Reformation and in Cromwell's time. This latter 
iconoclast is in especially bad odor with the sextons 
and vergers of most of the old churches which I have 
visited. His soldiers stabled their steeds in the nave 
of Lincoln Cathedral, and hacked and hewed the 
monkish sculptures, and the ancestral memorials of 
great families, quite at their wicked and plebeian 
pleasure. Nevertheless, there are some most exqui- 
site and marvellous specimens of flowers, foliage, and 
grapevines, and miracles of stone-work twined about 
arches, as if the material had been as soft as wax in 
the cunning sculptor's hands, — the leaves being rep- 
resented with all their veins, so that you would al- 
most think it petrified Nature, for which he sought to 
steal the praise of Art. Here, too, were those gro- 
tesque faces which always grin at you from the pro- 
jections of monkish architecture, as if the builders had 
gone mad with their own deep solemnity, or dreaded 
such a catastrophe, unless permitted to throw in some- 
thing ineffably absurd. 

Originally, it is supposed, all the pillars of this great 
edifice, and all these magic sculptures, were polished to 
the utmost degree of lustre ; nor is it unreasonable to 
think that the artists would have taken these further 
pains, when they had already bestowed so much labor 
in working out their conceptions to the extremest 
point. But, at present, the whole interior of the Ca- 
thedral is smeared over with a yellowish wash, the 
very meanest hue imaginable, and for which some- 
body's soul has a bitter reckoning to undergo. 

In the centre of the grassy quadrangle about which 



180 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

the cloisters perambulate is a small, mean brick build- 
ing, with a locked door. Our guide, — 1 forgot to say 
that we had been captured by a verger, in black, and 
with a white tie, but of a lusty and jolly aspect, — 
our guide unlocked this door, and disclosed a flight of 
steps. At the bottom appeared what I should have 
taken to be a large square of dim, worn, and faded oil- 
carpeting, which might originally have been painted 
of a rather gaudy pattern. This was a Roman tessel- 
lated pavement, made of small colored bricks, or pieces 
of burnt clay. It was accidentally discovered here, 
and has not been meddled with, further than by re- 
moving the superincumbent earth and rubbish. 

Nothing else occurs to me, just now, to be recorded 
about the interior of the Cathedral, except that we saw 
a place where the stone pavement had been worn away 
by the feet of ancient pilgrims scraping upon it, as 
they knelt down before a shrine of the Virgin. 

Leaving the Minster, we now went along a street of 
more venerable appearance than we had heretofore 
seen, bordered with houses, the high-peaked roofs of 
which were covered with red earthen tiles. It led us 
to a Roman arch, which was once the gateway of a 
fortification, and has been striding across the English 
street ever since the latter was a faint village - path, 
and for centuries before. The arch is about four hun- 
dred yards from the Cathedral, and it is to be noticed 
that there are Roman remains in all this neighbor- 
hood, some above ground, and doubtless innumerable 
more beneath it ; for, as in ancient Rome itself, an in- 
undation of accumulated soil seems to have swept over 
what was the surface of that earlier da} r . The gate- 
way which I am speaking about is probably buried to 
a third of its height, and perhaps has as perfect a Ro* 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 181 

man pavement (if sought for at the original depth) as 
that which runs beneath the Arch of Titus. It is a 
rude and massive structure, and seems as stalwart now 
as it could have been two thousand years ago ; and 
though Time has gnawed it externally, he has made 
what amends he could by crowning its rough and bro- 
ken summit with grass and weeds, and planting tufts 
of yellow flowers on the projections up and down the 
sides. . 

There are the ruins of a Norman castle, built by the 
Conqueror, in pretty close proximity to the Cathedral ; 
but the old gateway is obstructed by a modern door of 
wood, and we were denied admittance, because some 
part of the precincts are used as a prison. We now 
rambled about on the broad back of the hill, which, 
besides the Minster and ruined castle, is the site of 
some stately and queer old houses, and of many mean 
little hovels. I suspect that all or most of the life of 
the present day has subsided into the lower town, and 
that only priests, poor people, and prisoners dwell in 
these upper regions. In the wide, dry moat, at the 
base of the castle-wall, are clustered whole colonies of 
small houses, some of brick, but the larger portion 
built of old stones which once made part of the Nor- 
man keep, or of Roman structures that existed before 
the Conqueror's castle was ever dreamed about. They 
are like toadstools that spring up from the mould of 
a decaying tree. Ugly as they are, they add wonder- 
fully to the picturesqueness of the scene, being quite 
as valuable, in that respect, as the great, broad, pon- 
derous ruin of the castle-keep, which rose high above 
our heads, heaving its huge, gray mass out of a bank 
of green foliage and ornamental shrubbery, such as 
lilacs, and other flowering plants, in which its founda- 
tions were completely hidden. 



182 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

After walking quite round the castle, I made an ex- 
cursion through the Roman gateway, along a pleasant 
and level road bordered with dwellings of various char- 
acter. One or two were houses of gentility, with de- 
lightful and shadowy lawns before them ; many had 
those high, red -tiled roofs, ascending into acutely 
pointed gables, which seem to belong to the same epoch 
as some of the edifices in our own earlier towns ; and 
there were pleasant-looking cottages, very sylvan and 
rural, with hedges so dense and high, fencing them in, 
as almost to hide them up to the eaves of their thatched 
roofs. In front of one of these I saw various images, 
crosses, and relics of antiquity, among which were 
fragments of old Catholic tombstones, disposed by 
way of ornament. 

We now went home to the Saracen's Head ; and as 
the weather was very unpropitious, and it sprinkled a 
little now and then, I would gladly have felt myself 
released from further thraldom to the Cathedral. But 
it had taken possession of me, and would not let me 
be at rest ; so at length I found myself compelled to 
climb the hill again between daylight and dusk. A 
mist was now hovering about the upper height of the 
great central tower, so as to dim and half obliterate 
its battlements and pinnacles, even while I stood in 
the close beneath it. It was the most impressive view 
that I had had. The whole lower part of the structure 
was seen with perfect distinctness ; but at the very sum- 
mit the mist was so dense as to form an actual cloud, 
as well defined as ever I saw resting on a mountain- 
top. Really and literally, here was a " cloud - capt 
tower." 

The entire Cathedral, too, transfigured itself into a 
richer beauty and more imposing majesty than ever. 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 183 

The longer I looked, the better I loved it. Its exte- 
rior is certainly far more beautiful than that of York 
Minster ; and its finer effect is due, I think, to the 
many peaks in which the structure ascends, and to the 
pinnacles which, as it were, repeat and reecho them 
into the sky. York Cathedral is comparatively square 
and angular in its general effect ; but in this at Lin- 
coln there is a continual mystery of variety, so that at 
every glance you are aware of a change, and a disclos- 
ure of something new, yet working an harmonious 
development of what you have heretofore seen. The 
west front is unspeakably grand, and may be read 
over and over again forever, and still show undetected 
meanings, like a great, broad page of marvellous writ- 
ing in black-letter, — so many sculptured ornaments 
there are, blossoming out before your eyes, and gray 
statues that have grown there since you looked last, 
and empty niches, and a hundred airy canopies be- 
neath which carved images used to be, and where they 
will show themselves again, if you gaze long enough. 
— But I will not say another word about the Cathe- 
dral. 

We spent the rest of the day within the sombre 
precincts of the Saracen's Head, reading yesterday's 
" Times," " The Guide-Book of Lincoln," and " The 
Directory of the Eastern Counties." Dismal as the 
weather was, the street beneath our window was en- 
livened with a great bustle and turmoil of people all 
the evening, because it was Saturday night, and they 
had accomplished their week's toil, received their wa- 
ges, and were making their small purchases against 
Sunday, and enjoying themselves as well as they knew 
how. A band of music passed to and fro several times, 
with the rain-drops falling into the mouth of the bra- 



184 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

zen trumpet and pattering on the bass-drum ; a spirit- 
shop, opposite the hotel, had a vast run of custom; 
and a coffee-dealer, in the open air, found occasional 
vent for his commodity, in spite of the cold water that 
dripped into the cups. The whole breadth of the 
street, between the Stone Bow and the bridge across 
the Witham, was thronged to overflowing, and hum- 
ming with human life. 

Observing in the Guide-Book that a steamer runs on 
the river Witham between Lincoln and Boston, I in- 
quired of the waiter, and learned that she was to start 
on Monday at ten o'clock. Thinking it might be an 
interesting trip, and a pleasant variation of our cus- 
tomary mode of travel, we determined to make the 
voyage. The Witham flows through Lincoln, crossing 
the main street under an arched bridge of Gothic con- 
struction, a little below the Saracen's Head. It has 
more the appearance of a canal than of a river, in its 
passage through the town, — being bordered with hewn- 
stone mason-work on each side, and provided with one 
or two locks. The steamer proved to be small, dirty, 
and altogether inconvenient. The early morning had 
been bright ; but the sky now lowered upon us with 
a sulky English temper, and we had not long put off 
before we felt an ugly wind from the German Ocean 
blowing right in our teeth. There were a number of 
passengers on board, country-people, such as travel by 
third-class on the railway ; for, I suppose, nobody but 
ourselves ever dreamt of voyaging by the steamer for 
the sake of what he might happen upon in the way of 
river-scenery. 

We bothered a good while about getting through a 
preliminary lock ; nor, when fairly under way, did we 
ever accomplish, I think, six miles an hour. Constant 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 185 

delays were caused, moreover, by stopping to take 
up passengers and freight, — not at regular landing- 
places, but anywhere along the green banks. The 
scenery was identical with that of the railway, because 
the latter runs along by the river -side through the 
whole distance, or nowhere departs from it except to 
make a short cut across some sinuosity ; so that our 
only advantage lay in the drawling, snail-like sloth - 
fulness of our progress, which allowed us time enough 
and to spare for the objects along the shore. Unfor- 
tunately, there was nothing, or next to nothing, to be 
seen, — the country being one unvaried level over the 
whole thirty miles of our voyage, — not a hill in sight 
either near or far, except that solitary one on the sum- 
mit of which we had left Lincoln Cathedral. And 
the Cathedral was our landmark for four hours or 
more, and at last rather faded out than was hidden by 
any intervening object. 

It would have been a pleasantly lazy day enough, if 
the rough and bitter wind had not blown directly in 
our faces, and chilled us through, in spite of the sun- 
shine that soon succeeded a sprinkle or two of rain. 
These English east-winds, which prevail from Febru- 
ary till June, are greater nuisances than the east-wind 
of our own Atlantic coast, although they do not bring 
mist and storm, as with us, but some of the sunniest 
weather that England sees. Under their influence, 
the sky smiles and is villanous. 

The landscape was tame to the last degree, but had 
an English character that was abundantly worth our 
looking at. A green luxuriance of early grass ; old, 
high -roofed farm-houses, surrounded by their stone 
barns and ricks of hay and grain ; ancient villages, 
with the square, gray tower of a church seen afar over 



186 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

the level country, amid the cluster of red roofs ; here 
and there a shadowy grove of venerable trees, sur- 
rounding what was perhaps an Elizabethan hall, 
though it looked more like the abode of some rich 
yeoman. Once, too, we saw the tower of a mediaeval 
castle, that of Tattershall, built by a Cromwell, but 
whether of the Protector's family I cantiot tell. But 
the gentry do not appear to have settled multitudi- 
nously in this tract of country ; nor is it to be won- 
dered at, since a lover of the picturesque would as 
soon think of settling in Holland. The river retains 
its canal-like aspect all along ; and only in the latter 
part of its course does it become more than wide 
enough for the little steamer to turn itself round, — 
at broadest, not more than twice that width. 

The only memorable incident of our voyage hap- 
pened when a mother-duck was leading her little fleet 
of five ducklings across the river, just as our steamer 
went swaggering by, stirring the quiet stream into 
great waves that lashed the banks on either side. I 
saw the imminence of the catastrophe, and hurried to 
the stern of the boat to witness its consummation, 
since I could not possibly avert it. The poor duck- 
lings had uttered their baby-quacks, and striven with 
all their tiny might to escape ; four of them, I believe, 
were washed aside and thrown off unhurt from the 
steamer's prow ; but the fifth must have gone under 
the whole length of the keel, and never could have 
come up alive. 

At last, in mid-afternoon, we beheld the tall tower 
of Saint Botolph's Church (three hundred feet high, 
the same elevation as the tallest tower of Lincoln Ca- 
thedral) looming in the distance. At about half past 
four we reached Boston (which name has been short- 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 187 

ened, in the course of ages, by the quick and slovenly 
English pronunciation, from Botolph's town), and 
were taken by a cab to the Peacock, in the market- 
place. It was the best hotel in town, though a poor 
one enough ; and we were shown into a small, stifled 
parlor, dingy, musty, and scented with stale tobacco- 
smoke, — tobacco-smoke two days old, for the waiter 
assured us that the room had not more recently been 
fumigated. An exceedingly grim waiter he was, ap- 
parently a genuine descendant of the old Puritans of 
this English Boston, and quite as sour as those who 
people the daughter-city in New England. Our par- 
lor had the one recommendation of looking into the 
market-place, and affording a sidelong glimpse of the 
tall spire and noble old church. 

In my first ramble about the town, chance led me 
to the river-side, at that quarter where the port is sit- 
uated. Here were long buildings of an old-fashioned 
aspect, seemingly warehouses, with windows in the 
high, steep roofs. The Custom House found ample 
accommodation within an ordinary dwelling-house. 
Two or three large schooners were moored along the 
river's brink, which had here a stone margin ; another 
large and handsome schooner was evidently just fin- 
ished, rigged and equipped for her first voyage ; the 
rudiments of another were on the stocks, in a ship-yard 
bordering on the river. Still another, while I was 
looking on, came up the stream, and lowered her 
mainsail, from a foreign voyage. An old man on the 
bank hailed her and inquired about her cargo ; but 
the Lincolnshire people have such a queer way of 
talking English that I could not understand the reply. 
Farther down the river, I saw a brig, approaching 
rapidly under sail. The whole scene made an odd 



188 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

impression of bustle, and sluggishness, and decay, and 
a remnant of wholesome life ; and I could not but con- 
trast it with the mighty and populous activity of our 
own Boston, which was once the feeble infant of this 
old English town, — the latter, perhaps, almost sta- 
tionary ever since that day, as if the birth of such an 
offspring had taken away its own principle of growth. 
I thought of Long Wharf, and Faneuil Hall, and 
Washington Street, and the Great Elm, and the State 
House, and exulted lustily, — but yet began to feel 
at home in this good old town, for its very name's 
sake, as I never had before felt, in England. 

The next morning we came out in the early sun- 
shine (the sun must have been shining nearly four 
hours, however, for it was after eight o'clock), and 
strolled about the streets, like people who had a right 
to be there. The market-place of Boston is an irreg- 
ular square, into one end of which the chancel of 
the church slightly projects. The gates of the church- 
yard were open and free to all passengers, and the 
common footway of the towns-people seems to lie to 
and fro across it. It is paved, according to English 
custom, with flat tombstones ; and there are also raised 
or altar tombs, some of which have armorial bearings 
on them. One clergyman has caused himself and his 
wife to be buried right in the middle of the stone-bor- 
dered path that traverses the churchyard ; so that not 
an individual of the thousands who pass along this 
public way can help trampling over him or her. The 
scene, nevertheless, was very cheerful in the morning 
sun : people going about their business in the day's 
primal freshness, which was just as fresh here as in 
younger villages ; children with milk - pails loitering 
over the burial-stones ; school-boys playing leap-frog 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 189 

with the altar-tombs ; the simple old town preparing 
itself for the day, which would be like myriads of 
other days that had passed over it, but yet would be 
worth living through. And down on the churchyard, 
where were buried many generations whom it remem- 
bered in their time, looked the stately tower of Saint 
Botolph ; and it was good to see and think of such an 
age-long giant intermarrying the present epoch with 
a distant past, and getting quite imbued with human 
nature by being so immemorially connected with men's 
familiar knowledge and homely interests. It is a 
noble tower ; and the jackdaws, evidently have pleas- 
ant homes in their hereditary nests among its top- 
most windows, and live delightful lives, flitting and 
cawing about its pinnacles and flying buttresses. I 
should almost like to be a jackdaw myself, for the 
sake of living up there. 

In front of the church, not more than twenty yards 
off, and with a low brick wall between, flows the river 
Witham. On the hither bank a fisherman was wash- 
ing his boat ; and another skiff, with her sail lazily 
half twisted, lay on the opposite strand. The stream 
at this point is about of such width, that, if the tall 
tower were to tumble over flat on its face, its top- 
stone might perhaps reach to the middle of the chan- 
nel. On the farther shore there is a line of antique- 
looking houses, with roofs of red tile, and windows 
opening out of them, — some of these dwellings be- 
ing so ancient, that the Reverend Mr. Cotton, subse- 
quently our first Boston minister, must have seen 
them with his own bodily eyes when he used to issue 
from the front -portal after service. Indeed, there 
must be very many houses here, and even some streets, 
that bear much the aspect that they did when the Pu- 
ritan divine paced solemnly among them. 



190 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

In our rambles about town, we went into a book- 
seller's shop to inquire if he had any description of 
Boston for sale. He offered me (or, rather, produced 
for inspection, not supposing that I would buy it) a 
quarto history of the town, published by subscription, 
nearly forty years ago. The bookseller showed him- 
self a well-informed and affable man, and a local anti- 
quary, to whom a party of inquisitive strangers were 
a godsend. He had met with several Americans, who, 
at various times, had come on pilgrimages to this 
place, and he had been in correspondence with others. 
Happening to have heard the name of one member of 
our party, he showed us great courtesy and kindness, 
and invited us into his inner domicile, where, as he 
modestly intimated, he kept a few articles which it 
might interest us to see. So we went with him 
through the shop, up stairs, into the private part of 
his establishment ; and, really, it was one of the rar> 
est adventures I ever met with, to stumble upon this 
treasure of a man, with his treasury of antiquities and 
curiosities, veiled behind the unostentatious front of a 
bookseller's shop, in a very moderate line of village 
business. The two up-stair rooms into which he intro- 
duced us were so crowded with inestimable articles, 
that we were almost afraid to stir for fear of breaking 
some fragile thing that had been accumulating value 
for unknown centuries. 

The apartment was hung round with pictures and 
old engravings, many of which were extremely rare. 
Premising that he was going to show us something 
very curious, Mr. Porter went into the next room 
and returned with a counterpane of fine linen, elabo- 
rately embroidered with silk, which so profusely cov- 
ered the linen that the general effect was as if the 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 191 

main texture were silken. It was stained and seemed 
very old, and had an ancient fragrance. It was wrought 
all over with birds and flowers in a most delicate style 
of needlework, and among other devices, more than 
once repeated, was the cipher, M. S., — being the ini- 
tials of one of the most unhappy names that ever a 
woman bore. This quilt was embroidered by the 
hands of Mary Queen of Scots, during her imprison- 
ment at Fotheringay Castle ; and having evidently 
been a work of years, she had doubtless shed many 
tears over it, and wrought many doleful thoughts and 
abortive schemes into its texture, along with the birds 
and flowers. As a counterpart to this most precious 
relic, our friend produced some of the handiwork of a 
former Queen of Otaheite, presented by her to Cap- 
tain Cook ; it was a bag, cunningly made of some 
delicate vegetable stuff, and ornamented with feathers. 
Next, he brought out a green silk waistcoat of very 
antique fashion, trimmed about the edges and pocket- 
holes with a rich and delicate embroidery of gold and 
silver. This (as the possessor of the treasure proved, 
by tracing its pedigree till it came into his hands) 
was once the vestment of Queen Elizabeth's Lord 
Burleigh ; but that great statesman must have been a 
person of very moderate girth in the chest and waist ; 
for the garment was hardly more than a comfortable 
fit for a boy of eleven, the smallest American of our 
party, who tried on the gorgeous waistcoat. Then, 
Mr. Porter produced some curiously engraved drink- 
ing-glasses, with a view of Saint Botolph's steeple on 
one of them, and other Boston edifices, public or do- 
mestic, on the remaining two, very admirably done. 
These crystal goblets had been a present, long ago, to 
an old master of the Free School from his pupils ; and 



192 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

it is very rarely, I imagine, that a retired schoolmas- 
ter can exhibit such trophies of gratitude and affec- 
tion, won from the victims of his birch rod. 

Our kind friend kept bringing out one unexpected 
and wholly unexpectable thing after another, as if he 
were a magician, and had only to fling a private sig- 
nal into the air, and some attendant imp would hand 
forth any strange relic he might choose to ask for. 
He was especially rich in drawings by the Old Mas- 
ters, producing two or three, of exquisite delicacy, by 
Raphael, one by Salvator, a head by Rembrandt, and 
others, in chalk or pen-and-ink, by Giordano, Benve- 
nuto Cellini, and hands almost as famous ; and besides 
what were shown us, there seemed to be an endless 
supply of these art-treasures in reserve. On the wall 
hung a crayon-portrait of Sterne, never engraved, rep- 
resenting him as a rather young man, blooming, and 
not uncomely ; it was the worldly face of a man fond 
of pleasure, but without that ugly, keen, sarcastic, 
odd expression that we see in his only engraved por- 
trait. The picture is an original, and must needs be 
very valuable ; and we wish it might be prefixed to 
some new and worthier biography of a writer whose 
character the world has always treated with singular 
harshness, considering how much it owes him. There 
was likewise a crayon-portrait of Sterne's wife, look- 
ing so haughty and unamiable, that the wonder is, not 
that he ultimately left her, but how he ever contrived 
to live a week with such an awful woman. 

After looking at these, and a great many more 
things than I can remember, above stairs, we went 
down to a parlor, where this wonderful bookseller 
opened an old cabinet, containing numberless drawers, 
and looking just fit to be the repository of such knick- 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 193 

knacks as were stored up in it. He appeared to pos- 
sess more treasures than he himself knew of, or knew 
where to find; but, rummaging here and there, he 
brought forth things new and old : rose-nobles, Victo- 
ria crowns, gold angels, double sovereigns of George 
IV., two - guinea pieces of George II. ; a marriage- 
medal of the first Napoleon, only forty-five of which 
were ever struck off, and of which even the British 
Museum does not contain a specimen like this, in 
gold ; a brass medal, three or four inches in diameter, 
of a Roman emperor; together with buckles, brace- 
lets, amulets, and I know not what besides. There 
was a green silk tassel from the fringe of Queen 
Mary's bed at Holyrood Palace. There were illumi- 
nated missals, antique Latin Bibles, and (what may 
seem of especial interest to the historian) a Secret- 
Book of Queen Elizabeth, in manuscript, written, for 
aught I know, by her own hand. On examination, 
however, it proved to contain, not secrets of state, but 
recipes for dishes, drinks, medicines, washes, and all 
such matters of housewifery, the toilet, and domestic 
quackery, among which we were horrified by the title of 
one of the nostrums, " How to kill a Fellow quickly"! 
We never doubted that bloody Queen Bess might 
often have had occasion for such a recipe, but won- 
dered at her frankness, and at her attending to these 
anomalous necessities in such a methodical way. The 
truth is, we had read amiss, and the Queen had spelt 
amiss: the word was "Fellon," — a sort of whitlow, 
— not "Fellow." 

Our hospitable friend now made us drink a glass 
of wine, as old and genuine as the curiosities of his 
cabinet ; and, while sipping it, we ungratefully tried 
to excite his envy, by telling him various things, 

VOL. VII. 13 



194 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

interesting to an antiquary and virtuoso, which wo 
had seen in the course of our travels about England. 
We spoke, for instance, of a missal bound in solid 
gold and set around with jewels, but of such intrinsic 
value as no setting could enhance, for it was exqui- 
sitely illuminated, throughout, by the hand of Raphael 
himself. We mentioned a little silver case which 
once contained a portion of the heart of Louis XIV. 
nicely done up in spices, but, to the owner's horror 
and astonishment, Dean Buckland popped the kingly 
morsel into his mouth, and swallowed it. We told 
about the black - letter prayer - book of King Charles 
the Martyr, used by him upon the scaffold, taking 
which into our hands, it opened of itself at the Com- 
munion Service; and there, on the left-hand page, 
appeared a spot about as large as a sixpence, of a yel- 
lowish or brownish hue : a drop of the king's blood 
had fallen there. 

Mr. Porter now accompanied us to the church, but 
first leading us to a vacant spot of ground where old 
John Cotton's vicarage had stood till a very short 
time since. According to our friend's description, it 
was a humble habitation, of the cottage order, built of 
brick, with a thatched roof. The site is now rudely 
fenced in, and cultivated as a vegetable garden. In 
the right - hand aisle of the church there is an ancient 
chapel, which, at the time of our visit, was in process 
of restoration, and was to be dedicated to Mr. Cotton, 
whom these English people consider as the founder of 
our American Boston. It would contain a painted 
memorial-window, in honor of the old Puritan minis- 
ter. A festival in commemoration of the event was to 
take place in the ensuing July, to which I had myself 
received an invitation, but I knew too well the pains 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD SOSTON. 195 

and penalties incurred by an invited guest at public 
festivals in England to accept it. It ought to be re- 
corded (and it seems to have made a very kindly 
impression on our kinsfolk here) that five hundred 
pounds had been contributed by persons in the United 
States, principally in Boston, towards the cost of the 
memorial - window, and the repair and restoration of 
the chapel. 

After we emerged from the chapel, Mr. Porter ap- 
proached us with the vicar, to whom he kindly intro' 
duced us, and then took his leave. May a stranger's 
benediction rest upon him ! He is a most pleasant 
man ; rather, I imagine, a virtuoso than an antiquary ; 
for he seemed to value the Queen of Otaheite's bag as 
highly as Queen Mary's embroidered quilt, and to 
have an omnivorous appetite for everything strange 
and rare. Would that we could fill up his shelves and 
drawers (if there are any vacant spaces left) with the 
choicest trifles that have dropped out of Time's carpet- 
bag, or give him the carpet-bag itself, to take out 
what he will ! 

The vicar looked about thirty years old, a gentle- 
man, evidently assured of his position (as clergymen 
of the Established Church invariably are), comfortable 
and well-to-do, a scholar and a Christian, and fit to be 
a bishop, knowing how to make the most of life with- 
out prejudice to the life to come. I was glad to see 
such a model English priest so suitably accommodated 
with an old English church. He kindly and courte- 
ously did the honors, showing us quite round the inte- 
rior, giving us all the information that we required, 
and then leaving us to the quiet enjoyment of what 
we came to see. 

The interior of St. Botolph's is very fine and satis- 



196 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

factory, as stately, almost, as a cathedral, and has been 
repaired — so far as repairs were necessary — in a 
chaste and noble style. The great eastern window is 
of modern painted glass, but is the richest, mellowest, 
and tenderest modern window that I have ever seen : 
the art of painting these glowing transparencies in 
pristine perfection being one that the world has lost. 
The vast, clear space of the interior church delighted 
me. There was no screen, — nothing between the ves- 
tibule and the altar to break the long vista ; even the 
organ stood aside, — though it by and by made us 
aware of its presence by a melodious roar. Around 
the walls there were old engraved brasses, and a stone 
coffin, and an alabaster knight of Saint John, and an 
alabaster lady, each recumbent at full length, as large 
as life, and in perfect preservation, except for a slight 
modern touch at the tips of their noses. In the chan- 
cel we saw a great deal of oaken work, quaintly and 
admirably carved, especially about the seats formerly 
appropriated to the monks, which were so contrived as 
to tumble down with a tremendous crash if the occu- 
pant happened to fall asleep. 

We now essayed to climb into the upper regions. 
Up we went, winding and still winding round the cir- 
cular stairs, till we came to the gallery beneath the 
stone roof of the tower, whence we could look down 
and see the raised Font, and my Talma lying on one 
of the steps, and looking about as big as a pocket- 
handkerchief. Then up again, up, up, up, through a 
yet smaller staircase, till we emerged into another 
stone gallery, above the jackdaws, and far above the 
roof beneath which we had before made a halt. Then 
up another flight, which led us into a pinnacle of the 
temple, but not the highest ; so, retracing our steps, 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 197 

we took the right turret this time, and emerged into 
the loftiest lantern, where we saw level Lincolnshire, 
far and near, though with a haze on the distant hori- 
zon. There were dusty roads, a river, and canals, con- 
verging towards Boston, which — a congregation of 
red -tiled roofs — lay beneath our feet, with pygmy 
people creeping about its narrow streets. We were 
three hundred feet aloft, and the pinnacle on which 
we stood is a landmark forty miles at sea. 

Content, and weary of our elevation, we descended 
the corkscrew stairs and left the church ; the last ob- 
ject that we noticed in the interior being a bird, which 
appeared to be at home there, and responded with its 
cheerful notes to the swell of the organ. Pausing on 
the church-steps, we observed that there were formerly 
two statues, one on each side of the doorway ; the can- 
opies still remaining and the pedestals being about a 
yard from the ground. Some of Mr. Cotton's Puri- 
tan parishioners are probably responsible for the dis- 
appearance of these stone saints. This doorway at 
the base of the tower is now much dilapidated, but 
must once have been very rich and of a peculiar fash- 
ion. It opens its arch through a great square tablet 
of stone, reared against the front of the tower. On 
most of the projections, whether on the tower or about 
the body of the church, there are gargoyles of genu- 
ine Gothic grotesqueness, — fiends, beasts, angels, and 
combinations of all three ; and where portions of the 
edifice are restored, the modern sculptors have tried 
to imitate these wild fantasies, but with very poor suc- 
cess. Extravagance and absurdity have still their law, 
and should pay as rigid obedience to it as the prim- 
mest things on earth. 

In our further rambles about Boston, we crossed 



198 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

the river by a bridge, and observed that the largei 
part of the town seems to lie on that side of its navi- 
gable stream. The crooked streets and narrow lanes 
reminded me much of Hanover Street, Ann Street, 
and other portions of the North End of our American 
Boston, as I remember that picturesque region in my 
boyish days. It is not unreasonable to suppose that 
the local habits and recollections of the first settlers 
may have had some influence on the physical char- 
acter of the streets and houses in the New England 
metropolis ; at any rate, here is a similar intricacy of 
bewildering lanes, and numbers of old peaked and pro- 
jecting-storied dwellings, such as I used to see there. 
It is singular what a home-feeling and sense of kin- 
dred I derived from this hereditary connection and 
fancied physiognomical resemblance between the old 
town and its well-grown daughter, and how reluctant 
I was, after chill years of banishment, to leave this 
hospitable place, on that account. Moreover, it re- 
called some of the features of another American town, 
my own dear native place, when I saw the seafaring 
people leaning against posts, and sitting on planks, 
under the lee of warehouses, — or lolling on long- 
boats, drawn up high and dry, as sailors and old wharf- 
rats are accustomed to do, in seaports of little busi- 
ness. In other respects, the English town is more 
village-like than either of the American ones. The 
women and budding girls chat together at their doors, 
and exchange merry greetings with young men ; chil- 
dren chase one another in the summer twilight ; school- 
boys sail little boats on the river, or play at marbles 
across the flat tombstones in the churchyard ; and an- 
cient men, in breeches and long waistcoats, wander 
glowly about the streets, with a certain familiarity of 



PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 199 

deportment, as if each one were everybody's grand- 
father. I have frequently observed, in old English 
towns, that Old Age comes forth more cheerfully and 
genially into the sunshine than among ourselves, where 
the rush, stir, bustle, and irreverent energy of youth 
are so preponderant, that the poor, forlorn grandsires 
begin to doubt whether they have a right to breathe in 
such a world any longer, and so hide their silvery heads 
in solitude. Speaking of old men, I am reminded of 
the scholars of the Boston Charity School, who walk 
about in antique, long-skirted blue coats, and knee- 
breeches, and with bands at their necks, — perfect and 
grotesque pictures of the costume of three centuries 
ago. 

On the morning of our departure, I looked from the 
parlor-window of the Peacock into the market-place, 
and beheld its irregular square already well covered 
with booths, and more in process of being put up, by 
stretching tattered sail-cloth on poles. It was market- 
day. The dealers were arranging their commodities, 
consisting chiefly of vegetables, the great bulk of which 
seemed to be cabbages. Later in the forenoon there 
was a much greater variety of merchandise : basket- 
work, both for fancy and use ; twig-brooms, beehives, 
oranges, rustic attire ; all sorts of things, in short, that 
are commonly sold at a rural fair. I heard the lowing 
of cattle, too, and the bleating of sheep, and found 
that there was a market for cows, oxen, and pigs, in 
another part of the town. A crowd of towns-people 
and Lincolnshire yeomen elbowed one another in the 
square ; Mr. Punch was squeaking in one corner, and 
a vagabond juggler tried to find space for his exhibi- 
tion in another : so that my final glimpse of Boston 
was calculated to leave a livelier impression than my 



200 PILGRIMAGE TO OLD BOSTON. 

former ones. Meanwhile the tower of Saint Botolph's 
looked benignantly down ; and I fancied it was bid- 
ding me farewell, as it did Mr. Cotton, two or three 
hundred years ago, and telling me to describe its ven- 
erable height, and the town beneath it, to the people 
of the American city, who are partly akin, if not to the 
living inhabitants of Old Boston, yet to some of the 
dust that lies in its churchyard. 

One thing more. They have a Bunker Hill in the 
vicinity of their town ; and (what could hardly be ex- 
pected of an English community) seem proud to think 
that their neighborhood has given name to our first 
and most widely celebrated and best remembered bat- 
tle-field. 



NEAR OXFORD. 

On a fine morning in September we set out on an 
excursion to Blenheim, — the sculptor and myself being 
seated on the box of our four-horse carriage, two more 
of the party in the dicky, and the others less agreeably 
accommodated inside. We had no coachman, but two 
postilions in short scarlet jackets and leather breeches 
with top-boots, each astride of a horse ; so that, all the 
way along, when not otherwise attracted, we had the 
interesting spectacle of their up-and-down bobbing in 
the saddle. It was a sunny and beautiful day, a speci- 
men of the perfect English weather, just warm enough 
for comfort, — indeed, a little too warm, perhaps, in 
the noontide sun, — yet retaining a mere spice or 
suspicion of austerity, which made it all the more en- 
joyable. 

The country between Oxford and Blenheim is not 
particularly interesting, being almost level, or undulat- 
ing very slightly ; nor is Oxfordshire, agriculturally, 
a rich part of England. We saw one or two hamlets, 
and I especially remember a picturesque old gabled 
house at a turnpike-gate, and, altogether, the wayside 
scenery had an aspect of old-fashioned English life ; 
but there was nothing very memorable till we reached 
Woodstock, and stopped to water our horses at the 
Black Bear. This neighborhood is called New Wood- 
stock, but has by no means the brand-new appearance 
of an American town, being a large village of stone 
houses, most of them pretty well time-worn and 



202 NEAR OXFORD. 

weather-stained. The Black Bear is an ancient inn, 
large and respectable, with balustraded staircases, and 
intricate passages and corridors, and queer old pic- 
tures and engravings hanging in the entries and apart- 
ments. We ordered a lunch (the most delightful of 
English institutions, next to dinner) to be ready 
against our return, and then resumed our drive to 
Blenheim. 

The park-gate of Blenheim stands close to the end 
of the village street of Woodstock. Immediately on 
passing through its portals we saw the stately palace 
in the distance, but made a wide circuit of the park 
before approaching it. This noble park contains three 
thousand acres of land, and is fourteen miles in cir- 
cumference. Having been, in part, a royal domain 
before it was granted to the Marlborough family, it 
contains many" trees of unsurpassed antiquity, and has 
doubtless been the haunt of game and deer for cen- 
turies. We saw pheasants in abundance, feeding in 
the open lawns and glades ; and the stags tossed their 
antlers and bounded away, not affrighted, but only 
shy and gamesome, as we drove by. It is a magnif- 
icent pleasure-ground, not too tamely kept, nor rigidly 
subjected within rule, but vast enough to have lapsed 
back into nature again, after all the pains that the 
landscape-gardeners of Queen Anne's time bestowed 
on it, when the domain of Blenheim was scientifically 
laid out. The great, knotted, slanting trunks of the 
old oaks do not now look as if man had much inter- 
meddled with their growth and postures. The trees 
of later date, that were set out in the Great Duke's 
time, are arranged on the plan of the order of battle 
in which the illustrious commander ranked his troops 
at Blenheim ; but the ground covered is so extensive, 



NEAR OXFORD. 203 

and the trees now so luxuriant, that the spectator is 
not disagreeably conscious of their standing in military 
array, as if Orpheus had summoned them together by 
beat of drum. The effect must have been very formal 
a hundred and fifty years ago, but has ceased to be so, 
— although the trees, I presume, have kept their ranks 
with even more fidelity than Marlborough's veterans 
did. 

Oue of the park-keepers, on horseback, rode be- 
side our carriage, pointing out the choice views, and 
glimpses at the palace, as we drove through the do- 
main. There is a very large artificial lake (to say 
the truth, it seemed to me fully worthy of being com- 
pared with the Welsh lakes, at least, if not with those 
of Westmoreland), which was created by Capability 
Brown, and fills the basin that he scooped for it, just 
as if Nature had poured these broad waters into one 
of her own valleys. It is a most beautiful object at a 
distance, and not less so on its immediate banks ; for 
the water is very pure, being supplied by a small river, 
of the choicest transparency, which was turned thither- 
ward for the purpose. And Blenheim owes not merely 
this water-scenery, but almost all its other beauties, to 
the contrivance of man. Its natural features are not 
striking ; but Art has effected such wonderful things 
that the uninstructed visitor would never guess that 
nearly the whole scene was but the embodied thought 
of a human mind. A skilful painter hardly does more 
for his blank sheet of canvas than the landscape-gar- 
dener, the planter, the arranger of trees, has done for 
the monotonous surface of Blenheim, — making the 
most of every undulation, — flinging down a hillock, 
a big lump of earth out of a giant's hand, wherever 
it was needed, — putting in beauty as often as there 



204 NEAR OXFORD. 

was a niche for it, — opening vistas to every point 
that deserved to be seen, and throwing a veil of im- 
penetrable foliage around what ought to be hidden ; — 
and then, to be sure, the lapse of a century has soft- 
ened the harsh outline of man's labors, and has given 
the place back to Nature again with the addition of 
what consummate science could achieve. 

After driving a good way, we came to a battle- 
mented tower and adjoining house, which used to be 
the residence of the Ranger of Woodstock Park, who 
held charge of the property for the King before the 
Duke of Marlborough possessed it. The keeper opened 
the door for us, and in the entrance-hall we found va- 
rious things that had to do with the chase and wood- 
land sports. We mounted the staircase, through sev- 
eral stories, up to the top of the tower, whence there 
was a view of the spires of Oxford, and of points much 
farther off, — very indistinctly seen, however, as is 
usually the case with the misty distances of England. 
Returning to the ground-floor, we were ushered into 
the room in which died Wilmot, the wicked Earl of 
Rochester, who was Ranger of the Park in Charles 
II. 's time. It is a low and bare little room, with a 
window in front, and a smaller one behind ; and in the 
contiguous entrance-room there are the remains of an 
old bedstead, beneath the canopy of which, perhaps, 
Rochester may have made the penitent end that Bishop 
Burnet attributes to him. I hardly know what it is, 
in this poor fellow's character, which affects us with 
greater tenderness on his behalf than for all the other 
profligates of his day, who seem to have been neither 
better nor worse than himself. I rather suspect that 
he had a human heart which never quite died out of 
him, and the warmth of which is still faintly percep 
tible amid the dissolute trash which he left behind. 



NEAR OXFORD. 205 

Methinks, if such good fortune ever befell a bookish 
man, I should choose this lodge for my own residence, 
with the topmost room of the tower for a study, and 
all the seclusion of cultivated wildness beneath to ram- 
ble in. There being no such possibility, we drove on, 
catching glimpses of the palace in new points of view, 
and by and by came to Rosamond's Well. The par- 
ticular tradition that connects Fair Rosamond with it 
is not now in my memory ; but if Rosamond ever lived 
and loved, and ever had her abode in the maze of 
Woodstock, it may well be believed that she and 
Henry sometimes sat beside this spring. It gushes 
out from a bank, through some old stone-work, and 
dashes its little cascade (about as abundant as one 
might turn out of a large pitcher) into a pool, whence 
it steals away towards the lake, which is not far re- 
moved. The water is exceedingly cold, and as pure 
as the legendary Rosamond was not, and is fancied to 
possess medicinal virtues, like springs at which saints 
have quenched their thirst. There were two or three 
old women and some children in attendance with tum- 
blers, which they present to visitors, full of the con- 
secrated water ; but most of us filled the tumblers for 
ourselves, and drank. 

Thence we drove to the Triumphal Pillar which was 
erected in honor of the Great Duke, and on the sum- 
mit of which he stands, in a Roman garb, holding a 
winged figure of Victory in his hand, as an ordinary 
man might hold a bird. The column is I know not 
how many feet high, but lofty enough, at any rate, to 
elevate Marlborough far above the rest of the world, 
and to be visible a long way off ; and it is so placed 
in reference to other objects, that, wherever the hero 
wandered about his grounds, and especially as he is- 



206 NEAR OXFORD. 

sued from his mansion, he must inevitably have been 
reminded of his glory. In truth, until I came to 
Blenheim, I never had so positive and material an 
idea of what Fame really is — of what the admiration 
of his country can do for a successful warrior — as I 
carry away with me and shall always retain. Unless' 
he had the moral force of a thousand men together, 
his egotism (beholding himself everywhere, imbuing 
the entire soil, growing in the woods, rippling and 
gleaming in the water, and pervading the very air 
with his greatness) must have been swollen within him 
like the liver of a Strasburg goose. On the huge tab- 
lets inlaid into the pedestal of the column, the entire 
Act of Parliament, bestowing Blenheim on the Duke 
of Marlborough and his posterity, is engraved in deep 
letters, painted black on the marble ground. The pil- 
lar stands exactly a mile from the principal front of 
the palace, in a straight line with the precise centre of 
its entrance-hall ; so that, as already said, it was the 
Duke's principal object of contemplation. 

We now proceeded to the palace-gate, which is a 
great pillared archway, of wonderful loftiness and 
state, giving admittance into a spacious quadrangle. 
A stout, elderly, and rather surly footman in livery 
appeared at the entrance, and took possession of what- 
ever canes, umbrellas, and parasols he could get hold 
of, in order to claim sixpence on our departure. This 
had a somewhat ludicrous effect. There is much pub- 
lic outcry against the meanness of the present Duke 
in his arrangements for the admission of visitors 
(chiefly, of course, his native countrymen) to view 
the magnificent palace which their forefathers be- 
stowed upon his own. In many cases, it seems hard 
that a private abode should be exposed to the intra- 



NEAR OXFORD. 207 

sion of the public merely because the proprietor has 
inherited or created a splendor which attracts general 
curiosity ; insomuch that his home loses its sanctity 
and seclusion for the very reason that it is better than 
other men's houses. But in the case of Blenheim, 
the public have certainly an equitable claim to admis- 
sion, both because the fame of its first inhabitant is 
a national possession, and because the mansion was a 
national gift, one of the purposes of which was to be 
a token of gratitude and glory to the English people 
themselves. If a man chooses to be illustrious, he is 
very likely to incur some little inconveniences himself, 
and entail them on his posterity. Nevertheless, his 
present Grace of Marlborough absolutely ignores the 
public claim above suggested, and (with a thrift of 
which even the hero of Blenheim himself did not set 
the example) sells tickets admitting six persons at ten 
shillings ; if only one person enters the gate, he must 
pay for six ; and if there are seven in company, two 
tickets are required to admit them. The attendants, 
who meet you everywhere in the park and palace, ex- 
pect fees on their own private account, — their noble 
master pocketing the ten shillings. But, to be sure, 
the visitor gets his money's worth, since it buys him 
the right to speak just as freely of the Duke of Marl- 
borough as if he were the keeper of the Cremorne 
Gardens. 1 

Passing through a gateway on the opposite side of 
the quadrangle, we had before us the noble classic 

1 The above was written two or three years ago, or more ; and the 
Duke of that day has since transmitted his coronet to his successor, 
who, we understand, has adopted much more liberal arrangements. 
There is seldom anything to criticise or complain of, as regards the 
facility of obtaining admissiou to interesting private houses in Eng- 
land. 



208 NEAR OXFORD. 

front of the palace, with its two projecting wings. 
We ascended the lofty steps of the portal, and were 
admitted into the entrance-hall, the height of which, 
from floor to ceiling, is not much less than seventy 
feet, being the entire elevation of the edifice. The 
hall is lighted by windows in the upper story, and, it 
being a clear, bright day, was very radiant with lofty 
sunshine, amid which a swallow was flitting to and 
fro. The ceiling was painted by Sir James Thorn- 
hill in some allegorical design (doubtless commemora- 
tive of Marlborough's victories), the purport of which 
I did not take the trouble to make out, — contenting 
myself with the general effect, which was most splen- 
didly and effectively ornamental. 

We were guided through the show-rooms by a very 
civil person, who allowed us to take pretty much our 
own time in looking at the pictures. The collection 
is exceedingly valuable, — many of these works of 
Art having been presented to the Great Duke by the 
crowned heads of England or the Continent. One 
room was all aglow with pictures by Rubens; and 
there were works of Raphael, and many other famous 
painters, any one of which would be sufficient to illus- 
trate the meanest house that might contain it. I re- 
member none of them, however (not being in a pic- 
ture-seeing mood), so well as Yandyck's large and 
familiar picture of Charles I. on horseback, with a 
figure and face of melancholy dignity such as never 
by any other hand was put on canvas. Yet, on con- 
sidering this face of Charles (which I find often re- 
peated in half-lengths) and translating it from the 
ideal into literalism, I doubt whether the unfortunate 
king was really a handsome or impressive - looking 
man : a high, thin-ridged nose, a meagre, hatchet face, 



NEAR OXFORD. 209 

and reddish hair and beard, — these are the literal 
facts. It is the painter's art that has thrown such 
pensive and shadowy grace around him. 

On our passage through this beautiful suite of 
apartments, we saw, through the vista of open door- 
ways, a boy of ten or twelve years old coming towards 
us from the farther rooms. He had on a straw hat, 
a linen sack that had certainly been washed and re- 
washed for a summer or two, and gray trousers a good 
deal worn, — a dress, in short, which an American 
mother in middle station would have thought too 
shabby for her darling school -boy's ordinary wear. 
This urchin's face was rather pale (as those of Eng- 
glish children are apt to be, quite as often as our own), 
but he had pleasant eyes, an intelligent look, and an 
agreeable boyish manner. It was Lord Sunderland, 
grandson of the present Duke, and heir — though not, 
I think, in the direct line — of the blood of the great 
Marlborough, and of the title and estate. 

After passing through the first suite of rooms, we 
were conducted through a corresponding suite on the 
opposite side of the entrance - hall. These latter 
apartments are most richly adorned with tapestries, 
wrought and presented to the first Duke by a sister- 
hood of Flemish nuns ; they look like great, glowing 
pictures, and completely cover the walls of the rooms. 
The designs purport to represent the Duke's battles 
and sieges ; and everywhere we see the hero himself, 
as large as life, and as gorgeous in scarlet and gold as 
the holy sisters could make him, with a three-cornered 
hat and flowing wig, reining in his horse, and extend- 
ing his leading - staff in the attitude of command. 
Next to Marlborough, Prince Eugene is the most 
prominent figure. In the way of upholstery, there 

vol. vii. H 



210 NEAR OXFORD. 

can never have been anything more magnificent than 
these tapestries ; and, considered as works of Art, they 
have quite as much merit as nine pictures out of ten. 

One whole wing of the palace is occupied by the 
library, a most noble room, with a vast perspective 
length from end to end. Its atmosphere is brighter 
and more cheerful than that of most libraries : a won- 
derful contrast to the old college-libraries of Oxford, 
and perhaps less sombre and suggestive of thoughtful- 
ness than any large library ought to be ; inasmuch as 
so many studious brains as have left their deposit on 
the shelves cannot have conspired without producing 
a very serious and ponderous result. Both walls and 
ceiling are white, and there are elaborate doorways 
and fireplaces of white marble. The floor is of oak, 
so highly polished that our feet slipped upon it as if 
it had been New England ice. At one end of the 
room stands a statue of Queen Anne in her royal 
robes, which are so admirably designed and exqui- 
sitely wrought that the spectator certainly gets a 
strong conception of her royal dignity ; while the face 
of the statue, fleshy and feeble, doubtless conveys a 
suitable idea of her personal character. The marble 
of this work, long as it has stood there, is as white as 
snow just fallen, and must have required most faithful 
and religious care to keep it so. As for the volumes 
of the library, they are wired within the cases, and 
turn their gilded backs upon the visitor, keeping their 
treasures of wit and wisdom just as intangible as if 
still in the unwrought mines of human thought. 

I remember nothing else in the palace, except the 
chapel, to which we were conducted last, and where 
we saw a splendid monument to the first Duke and 
Duchess, sculptured by Rysbrach, at the cost, it is 



NEAR OXFORD. 211 

said, of forty thousand pounds. The design includes 
the statues of the deceased dignitaries, and various al- 
legorical flourishes, fantasies, and confusions ; and be- 
neath sleep the great Duke and his proud wife, their 
veritable bones and dust, and probably all the Marl- 
boroughs that have since died. It is not quite a com- 
fortable idea, that these mouldy ancestors still inhabit, 
after their fashion, the house where their successors 
spend the passing day; but the adulation lavished 
upon the hero of Blenheim could not have been con- 
summated, unless the palace of his lifetime had be- 
come likewise a stately mausoleum over his remains, 
— and such we felt it all to be, after gazing at his 
tomb. 

The next business was to see the private gardens. 
An old Scotch under -gardener admitted us and led 
the way, and seemed to have a fair prospect of earn- 
ing the fee all by himself ; but by and by another re- 
spectable Scotchman made his appearance and took 
us in charge, proving to be the head-gardener in per- 
son. He was extremely intelligent and agreeable, 
talking both scientifically and lovingly about trees 
and plants, of which there is every variety capable of 
English cultivation. Positively, the Garden of Eden 
cannot have been more beautiful than this private 
garden of Blenheim. It contains three hundred acres, 
and by the artful circumlocution of the paths, and the 
undulations, and the skilfully interposed clumps of 
trees, is made to appear limitless. The sylvan de- 
lights of a whole country are compressed into this 
space, as whole fields of Persian roses go to the con- 
coction of an ounce of precious attar. The world 
within that garden-fence is not the same weary and 
dusty world with which we outside mortals are conver- 



212 NEAR OXFORD. 

sant ; it is a finer, lovelier, more harmonious Nature •, 
and the Great Mother lends herself kindly to the gar- 
dener's will, knowing that he will make evident the 
half-obliterated traits of her pristine and ideal beauty, 
and allow her to take all the credit and praise to her- 
self. I doubt whether there is ever any winter within 
that precinct, — any clouds, except the fleecy ones of 
summer. The sunshine that I saw there rests upon 
my recollection of it as if it were eternal. The lawns 
and glades are like the memory of places where one 
has wandered when first in love. 

What a good and happy life might be spent in a 
paradise like this ! And yet, at that very moment, 
the besotted Duke (ah I I have let out a secret which 
I meant to keep to myself ; but the ten shillings must 
pay for all) was in that very garden (for the guide 
told us so, and cautioned our young people not to be 
too uproarious), and, if in a condition for arithmetic, 
was thinking of nothing nobler than how many ten- 
shilling tickets had that day been sold. Republican 
as I am, 1 should still love to think that noblemen 
lead noble lives, and that all this stately and beautiful 
environment may serve to elevate them a little way 
above the rest of us. If it fail to do so, the disgrace 
falls equally upon the whole race of mortals as on 
themselves ; because it proves that no more favorable 
conditions of existence would eradicate our vices and 
weaknesses. How sad, if this be so ! Even a herd of 
swine, eating the acorns under those magnificent oaks 
of Blenheim, would be cleanlier and of better habits 
than ordinary swine. 

Well, all that I have written is pitifully meagre, as 
a description of Blenheim ; and I hate to leave it with- 
out some more adequate expression of the noble edi- 



NEAR OXFORD. 213 

fice, with its rich domain, all as I saw them in that 
beautiful sunshine ; for, if a day had been chosen out 
of a hundred years, it could not have been a finer one. 
But I must give up the attempt ; only further remark- 
ing that the finest trees here were cedars, of which I 
saw one — and there may have been many such — im- 
mense in girth, and not less than three centuries old. 
I likewise saw a vast heap of laurel, two hundred feet 
in circumference, all growing from one root ; and the 
gardener offered to show us another growth of twice 
that stupendous size. If the Great Duke himself had 
been buried in that spot, his heroic heart could not 
have been the seed of a more plentiful crop of laurels. 
We now went back to the Black Bear, and sat down 
to a cold collation, of which we ate abundantly, and 
drank (in the good old English fashion) a due pro- 
portion of various delightful liquors. A stranger in 
England, in his rambles to various quarters of the 
country, may learn little in regard to wines (for the 
ordinary English taste is simple, though sound, in that 
particular), but he makes acquaintance with more 
varieties of hop and malt liquor than he previously 
supposed to exist. I remember a sort of foaming 
stuff, called hop-champagne, which is very vivacious, 
and appears to be a hybrid between ale and bottled 
cider. Another excellent tipple for warm weather is 
concocted by mixing brown-stout or bitter ale with 
ginger-beer, the foam of which stirs up the heavier 
liquor from its depths, forming a compound of singu- 
lar vivacity and sufficient body. But of all things 
ever brewed from malt (unless it be the Trinity Ale of 
Cambridge, which I drank long afterwards, and which 
Barry Cornwall has celebrated in immortal verse), 
commend me to the Archdeacon, as the Oxford schol- 



214 NEAR OXFORD. 

ars call it, in honor of the jovial dignitary who first 
taught these erudite worthies how to brew their favor- 
ite nectar. John Barleycorn has given his very heart 
to this admirable liquor ; it is a superior kind of ale, 
the Prince of Ales, with a richer flavor and a mightier 
spirit than you can find elsewhere in this weary world. 
Much have we been strengthened and encouraged by 
the potent blood of the Archdeacon ! • 

A few days after our excursion to Blenheim, the 
same party set forth, in two flies, on a tour to some 
other places of interest in the neighborhood of Oxford. 
It was again a delightful day ; and, in truth, every 
day, of late, had been so pleasant that it seemed as if 
each must be the very last of such perfect weather ; 
and yet the long succession had given us confidence in 
as many more to come. The climate of England has 
been shamefully maligned, its sulkiness and asperities 
are not nearly so offensive as Englishmen tell us (their 
climate being the only attribute of their country which 
they never overvalue) ; and the really good summer- 
weather is the very kindest and sweetest that the 
world knows. 

We first drove to the village of Cumnor, about six 
miles from Oxford, and alighted at the entrance of 
the church. Here, while waiting for the keys, we 
looked at an old wall of the churchyard, piled up of 
loose gray stones, which are said to have once formed 
a portion of Cumnor Hall, celebrated in Mickle's bal- 
lad and Scott's romance. The hall must have been 
in very close vicinity to the church, — not more than 
twenty yards off ; and I waded through the long, dewy 
grass of the churchyard, and tried to peep over the 
wall, in hopes to discover some tangible and traceable 
remains of the edifice. But the wall was just too high 



NEAR OXFORD. 215 

to be overlooked, and difficult to clamber over without 
tumbling down some of the stones ; so I took the word 
of one of our party, who had been here before, that 
there is nothing interesting on the other side. The 
churchyard is in rather a neglected state, and seems 
not to have been mown for the benefit of the parson's 
cow ; it contains a good many gravestones, of which I 
remember only some upright memorials of slate to in- 
dividuals of the name of Tabbs. 

Soon a woman arrived with the key of the church- 
door, and we entered the simple old edifice, which has 
the pavement of lettered tombstones, the sturdy pillars 
and low arches, and other ordinary characteristics of 
an English country church. One or two pews, prob- 
ably those of the gentlefolk of the neighborhood, were 
better furnished than the rest, but all in a modest 
style. Near the high altar, in the holiest place, there 
is an oblong, angular, ponderous tomb of blue marble, 
built against the wall, and surmounted by a carved 
canopy of the same material ; and over the tomb, and 
beneath the canopy, are two monumental brasses, such 
as we oftener see inlaid into a church pavement. On 
these brasses are engraved the figures of a gentleman 
in armor, and a lady in an antique garb, each about a 
foot high, devoutly kneeling in prayer ; and there is a 
long Latin inscription likewise cut into the enduring 
brass, bestowing the highest eulogies on the character 
of Anthony Forster, who, with his virtuous dame, lies 
buried beneath this tombstone. His is the knightly 
figure that kneels above ; and if Sir Walter Scott ever 
saw this tomb, he must have had an even greater than 
common disbelief in laudatory epitaphs, to venture on 
depicting Anthony Forster in such hues as blacken him 
in the romance. For my part, I read the inscription 



216 NEAR OXFORD. 

in full faith, and believe the poor deceased gentleman 
to be a much-wronged individual, with good grounds 
for bringing an action of slander in the courts above. 

But the circumstance, lightly as we treat it, has its 
serious moral. What nonsense it is, this anxiety, which 
so worries us about our good fame, or our bad fame, 
after death ! If it were of the slightest real moment, 
our reputations would have been placed by Providence 
more in our own power, and less in other people's, 
than we now find them to be. If poor Anthony Fors- 
ter happens to have met Sir Walter in the other world, 
I doubt whether he has ever thought it worth while 
to complain of the latter' s misrepresentations. 

We did not remain long in the church, as it con- 
tains nothing else of interest ; and, driving through the 
village, we passed a pretty large and rather antique- 
looking inn, bearing the sign of the Bear and Ragged 
Staff. It could not be so old, however, by at least a 
hundred years, as Giles Gosling's time ; nor is there 
any other object to remind the visitor of the Eliza- 
bethan age, unless it be a few ancient cottages, that 
are perhaps of still earlier date. Cumnor is not nearly 
so large a village, nor a place of such mark, as one an- 
ticipates from its romantic and legendary fame ; but, 
being still inaccessible by railway, it has retained more 
of a sylvan character than we often find in English 
country towns. In this retired neighborhood the road 
is narrow and bordered with grass, and sometimes in- 
terrupted by gates; the hedges grow in unpruned 
luxuriance ; there is not that close-shaven neatness and 
trimness that characterize the ordinary English land- 
scape. The whole scene conveys the idea of seclusion 
and remoteness. We met no travellers, whether on 
foot or otherwise. 



NEAR OXFORD. 217 

I cannot very distinctly trace out this day's pere- 
grinations ; but, after leaving Cumnor a few miles be- 
hind us, I think we came to a ferry over the Thames, 
where an old woman served as ferryman, and pulled a 
boat across by means of a rope stretching from shore 
to shore. Our two vehicles being thus placed on the 
other side, we resumed our drive, — first glancing, 
however, at the old woman's antique cottage, with its 
stone floor, and the circular settle round the kitchen 
fireplace, which was quite in the mediaeval English 
style. 

We next stopped at Stanton Harcourt, where we 
were received at the parsonage with a hospitality 
which we should take delight in describing, if it were 
allowable to make public acknowledgment of the pri- 
vate and personal kindnesses which we never failed to 
find ready for our needs. An American in an Eng- 
lish house will soon adopt the opinion that the English 
are the very kindest people on earth, and will retain 
that idea as long, at least, as he remains on the inner 
side of the threshold. Their magnetism is of a kind 
that repels strongly while you keep beyond a certain 
limit, but attracts as forcibly if you get within the 
magic line. 

It was at this place, if I remember right, that I 
heard a gentleman ask a friend of mine whether he 
was the author of " The Red Letter A " ; and, after 
some consideration (for he did not seem to recognize 
his own book, at first, under this improved title), our 
countryman responded, doubtfully, that he believed 
so. The gentleman proceeded to inquire whether our 
friend had spent much time in America, — evidently 
thinking that he must have been caught young, and 
have had a tincture of English breeding, at least, if 



218 NEAR OXFORD. 

not birth, to speak the language so tolerably, and ap- 
pear so much like other people. This insular narrow- 
ness is exceedingly queer, and of very frequent occur- 
rence, and is quite as much a characteristic of men of 
education and culture as of clowns. 

Stanton Harcourt is a very curious old place. It 
was formerly the seat of the ancient family of Har- 
court, which now has its principal abode at Nuneham 
Courtney, a few miles oif. The parsonage is a relic 
of the family mansion, or castle, other portions of 
which are close at hand ; for, across the garden, rise 
two gray towers, both of them picturesquely venerable, 
and interesting for more than their antiquity. One 
of these towers, in its entire capacity, from height to 
depth, constituted the kitchen of the ancient castle, 
and is still used for domestic purposes, although it 
has not, nor ever had, a chimney ; or, we might rather 
say, it is itself one vast chimney, with a hearth of 
thirty feet square, and a flue and aperture of the same 
size. There are two huge fireplaces within, and the 
interior walls of the tower are blackened with the 
smoke that for centuries used to gush forth from 
them, and climb upward, seeking an exit through 
some wide air-holes in the conical roof, full seventy 
feet above. These lofty openings were capable of be- 
ing so arranged, with reference to the wind, that the 
cooks are said to have been seldom troubled by the 
smoke ; and here, no doubt, they were accustomed to 
roast oxen whole, with as little fuss and ado as a mod- 
ern cook would roast a fowl. The inside of the tower 
is very dim and sombre (being nothing but rough 
stone walls, lighted only from the apertures above 
mentioned), and has still a pungent odor of smoke 
and soot, the reminiscence of the fires and feasts oi 



NEAR OXFORD. 219 

generations that have passed away. Methinks the ex- 
fcremest range of domestic economy lies between an 
American cooking-stove and the ancient kitchen, sev- 
enty dizzy feet in height and all one fireplace, of Stan- 
ton Harcourt. 

Now — the place being without a parallel in Eng- 
land, and therefore necessarily beyond the experience 
of an American — it is somewhat remarkable, that, 
while we stood gazing at this kitchen, I was haunted 
and perplexed by an idea that somewhere or other I 
had seen just this strange spectacle before. The 
height, the blackness, the dismal void, before my eyes, 
seemed as familiar as the decorous neatness of my 
grandmother's kitchen ; only my unaccountable mem- 
ory of the scene was lighted up with an image of lurid 
fires blazing all round the dim interior circuit of the 
tower. I had never before had so pertinacious an at- 
tack, as I could not but suppose it, of that odd state 
of mind wherein we fitfully and teasingly remember 
some previous scene or incident, of which the one now 
passing appears to be but the echo and reduplication. 
Though the explanation of the mystery did not for 
some time occur to me, I may as well conclude the mat- 
ter here. In a letter of Pope's, addressed to the Duke 
of Buckingham, there is an account of Stanton Har- 
court (as I now find, although the name is not men- 
tioned), where he resided while translating a part of 
the " Iliad." It is one of the most admirable pieces 
of description in the language, — playful and pictur- 
esque, with fine touches of humorous pathos, — and 
conveys as perfect a picture as ever was drawn of a de- 
cayed English country-house ; and among other rooms, 
most of which have since crumbled down and disap- 
peared, he dashes off the grim aspect of this kitchen, 



220 NEAR OXFORD. 

— which, moreover, he peoples with witches, engaging 
Satan himself as head-cook, who stirs the infernal cal- 
drons that seethe and bubble over the fires. This let- 
ter, and others relative to his abode here, were very- 
familiar to my earlier reading, and, remaining still 
fresh at the bottom of my memory, caused the weird 
and ghostly sensation that came over me on beholding 
the real spectacle that had formerly been made so 
vivid to my imagination. 

Our next visit was to the church, which stands close 
by, and is quite as ancient as the remnants of the cas- 
tle. In a chapel or side-aisle, dedicated to the Har- 
courts, are found some very interesting family monu- 
ments, — and among them, recumbent on a tombstone, 
the figure of an armed knight of the Lancastrian 
party, who was slain in the Wars of the Roses. His 
features, dress, and armor are painted in colors, still 
wonderfully fresh, and there still blushes the symbol 
of the Red Rose, denoting the faction for which he 
fought and died. His head rests on a marble or ala- 
baster helmet ; and on the tomb lies the veritable 
helmet, it is to be presumed, which he wore in battle, 

— a ponderous iron case, with the visor complete, and 
remnants of the gilding that once covered it. The 
crest is a large peacock, not of metal, but of wood. 
Very possibly, this helmet was but an heraldic adorn- 
ment of his tomb ; and, indeed, it seems strange that 
it has not been stolen before now, especially in Crom- 
well's time, when knightly tombs were little respected, 
and when armor was in request. However, it is need- 
less to dispute with the dead knight about the identity 
of his iron pot, and we may as well allow it to be the 
very same that so often gave him the headache in his 
lifetime. Leaning against the wall, at the foot of the 



NEAR OXFORD. 221 

tomb, is the shaft of a spear, with a wofully tattered 
and utterly faded banner appended to it, — the knightly 
banner beneath which he marshalled his followers in 
the field. As it was absolutely falling to pieces, 1 
tore off one little bit, no bigger than a finger-nail, and 
put it into my waistcoat-pocket ; but seeking it subse- 
quently, it was not to be found. 

On the opposite side of the little chapel, two or 
three yards from this tomb, is another monument, on 
which lie, side by side, one of the same knightly race 
of Harcourts, and his lady. The tradition of the 
family is, that this knight was the standard-bearer of 
Henry of Richmond in the Battle of Bosworth Field ; 
and a banner, supposed to be the same that he carried, 
now droops over his effigy. It is just such a colorless 
silk rag as the one already described. The knight has 
the order of the Garter on his knee, and the lady wears 
it on her left arm, — an odd place enough for a garter ; 
but, if worn in its proper locality, it could not be dec- 
orously visible. The complete preservation and good 
condition of these statues, even to the minutest adorn- 
ment of the sculpture, and their very noses, — the 
most vulnerable part of a marble man, as of a living 
one, — are miraculous. Except in Westminster Ab- 
bey, among the chapels of the kings, I have seen none 
so well preserved. Perhaps they owe it to the loyalty 
of Oxfordshire, diffused throughout its neighborhood 
by the influence of the University, during the great 
Civil War and the rule of the Parliament. It speaks 
well, too, for the upright and kindly character of this 
old family, that the peasantry, among whom they had 
lived for ages, did not desecrate their tombs, when it 
might have been done with impunity. 

There are other and more recent memorials of the 



222 NEAR OXFORD. 

Harcourts, one of which is the tomb of the last lord, 
who died about a hundred years ago. His figure, like 
those of his ancestors, lies on the top of his tomb, clad, 
not in armor, but in his robes as a peer. The title 
is now extinct, but the family survives in a younger 
branch, and still holds this patrimonial estate, though 
they have long since quitted it as a residence. 

We next went to see the ancient fish-ponds apper- 
taining to the mansion, and which used to be of vast 
dietary importance to the family in Catholic times, 
and when fish was not otherwise attainable. There 
are two or three, or more, of these reservoirs, one of 
which is of very respectable size, — large enough, in- 
deed, to be really a picturesque object, with its grass- 
green borders, and the trees drooping over it, and the 
towers of the castle and the church reflected within 
the weed-grown depths of its smooth mirror. A sweet 
fragrance, as it were, of ancient time and present quiet 
and seclusion was breathing all around ; the sunshine 
of to-day had a mellow charm of antiquity in its bright- 
ness. These ponds are said still to breed abundance 
of such fish as love deep and quiet waters ; but I saw 
only some minnows, and one or two snakes, which were 
lying among the weeds on the top of the water, sun- 
ning and bathing themselves at once. 

I mentioned that there were two towers remaining 
of the old castle : the one containing the kitchen we 
have already visited ; the other, still more interesting, 
is next to be described. It is some seventy feet high, 
gray and reverend, but in excellent repair, though I 
could not perceive that anything had been done to 
renovate it. The basement story was once the family 
chapel, and is, of course, still a consecrated spot. At 
one corner of the tower is a circular turret, within 



NEAR OXFORD. 223 

which a narrow staircase, with worn steps of stone, 
winds round and round as it climbs upward, giving 
access to a chamber on each floor, and finally emerg- 
ing on the battlemented roof. Ascending this turret- 
stair, and arriving at the third story, we entered a 
chamber, not large, though occupying the whole area 
of the tower, and lighted by a window on each side. 
It was wainscoted from floor to ceiling with dark 
oak, and had a little fireplace in one of the corners. 
The window-panes were small and set in lead. The 
curiosity of this room is, that it was once the residence 
of Pope, and that he here wrote a considerable part of 
the translation of Homer, and likewise, no doubt, the 
admirable letters to which I have referred above. The 
room once contained a record by himself, scratched 
with a diamond on one of the window-panes (since re- 
moved for safe-keeping to Nuneham Courtney, where 
it was shown me), purporting that he had here fin- 
ished the fifth book of the " Iliad " on such a day. 

A poet has a fragrance about him, such as no other 
human being is gifted withal ; it is indestructible, and 
clings for evermore to everything that he has touched. 
I was not impressed, at Blenheim, with any sense that 
the mighty Duke still haunted the palace that was 
created for him ; but here, after a century and a half, 
we are still conscious of the presence of that decrepit 
little figure of Queen Anne's time, although he was 
merely a casual guest in the old tower, during one or 
two summer months. However brief the time and 
slight the connection, his spirit cannot be exorcised 
so long as the tower stands. In my mind, moreover, 
Pope, or any other person with an available claim, is 
right in adhering to the spot, dead or alive ; for I 
never saw a chamber that I should like better to in- 



224 NEAR OXFORD. 

habit, — so comfortably small, in such a safe and in- 
accessible seclusion, and with a varied landscape from 
each window. One of them looks upon the church, 
close at hand, and down into the green churchyard, 
extending almost to the foot of the tower ; the others 
have views wide and far, over a gently undulating 
tract of country. If desirous of a loftier elevation, 
about a dozen more steps of the turret-stair will bring 
the occupant to the summit of the tower, — where 
Pope used to come, no doubt, in the summer evenings, 
and peep — poor little shrimp that he was ! — through 
the embrasures of the battlement. 

From Stanton Harcourt we drove — I forget how 
far — to a point where a boat was waiting for us upon 
the Thames, or some other stream ; for I am ashamed 
to confess my ignorance of the precise geographical 
whereabout. We were, at any rate, some miles above 
Oxford, and, I should imagine, pretty near one of the 
sources of England's mighty river. It was little more 
than wide enough for the boat, with extended oars, to 
pass, — shallow, too, and bordered with bulrushes and 
water-weeds, which, in some places, quite overgrew the 
surface of the river from bank to bank. The shores 
were flat and meadow-like, and sometimes, the boat- 
man told us, are overflowed by the rise of the stream. 
The water looked clean and pure, but not particularly 
transparent, though enough so to show us that the bot- 
tom is very much weed - grown ; and I was told that 
the weed is an American production, brought to Eng- 
land with importations of timber, and now threatening 
to choke up the Thames and other English rivers. I 
wonder it does not try its obstructive powers upon the 
Merrimack, the Connecticut, or the Hudson, — not to 
speak of the St. Lawrence or the Mississippi ! 



NEAR OXFORD. 225 

It was an open boat, with cushioned seats astern, 
comfortably accommodating our party; the day con- 
tinued sunny and warm, and perfectly still ; the boat- 
man, well trained to his business, managed the oars 
skilfully and vigorously ; and we went down the 
stream quite as swiftly as it was desirable to go, the 
scene being so pleasant, and the passing hours so thor- 
oughly agreeable. The river grew a little wider and 
deeper, perhaps, as we glided on, but was still an in- 
considerable stream : for it had a good deal more than 
a hundred miles to meander through before it should 
bear fleets on its bosom, and reflect palaces and tow- 
ers and Parliament houses and dingy and sordid piles 
of various structure, as it rolled to and fro with the 
tide, dividing London asunder. Not, in truth, that I 
ever saw any edifice whatever reflected in its turbid 
breast, when the sylvan stream, as we beheld it now, 
is swollen into the Thames at 'London. 

Once, on our voyage, we had to land, while the 
boatman and some other persons drew our skiff round 
some rapids, which we could not otherwise have passed ; 
another time, the boat went through a lock. We, 
meanwhile, stepped ashore to examine the ruins of the 
old nunnery of Godstowe, where Fair Rosamond se- 
cluded herself, after being separated from her royal 
lover. There is a long line of ruinous wall, and a 
shattered tower at one of the angles ; the whole much 
ivy-grown, — brimming over, indeed, with clustering 
ivy, which is rooted inside of the walls. The nunnery 
is now, I believe, held in lease by the city of Oxford, 
which has converted its precincts into a barn-yard. 
The gate was under lock and key, so that we could 
merely look at the outside, and soon resumed our 
places in the boat. 

VOL. VII. 15 



226 NEAR OXFORD. 

At three o'clock or thereabouts (or sooner or later, 
— for I took little heed of time, and only wished that 
these delightful wanderings might last forever) we 
reached Folly Bridge, at Oxford. Here we took pos- 
session of a spacious barge, with a house in it, and a 
comfortable dining-room or drawing-room within the 
house, and a level roof, on which we could sit at ease, 
or dance if so inclined. These barges are common at 
Oxford, — some very splendid ones being owned by 
the students of the different colleges, or by clubs. They 
are drawn by horses, like canal-boats ; and a horse be- 
ing attached to our own barge, he trotted off at a rea- 
sonable pace, and we slipped through the water behind 
him, with a gentle and pleasant motion, which, save 
for the constant vicissitude of cultivated scenery, was 
like no motion at all. It was life without the trouble 
of living; nothing was ever more quietly agreeable. 
In this happy state of -mind and body we gazed at 
Christ Church meadows, as we passed, and at the re- 
ceding spires and towers of Oxford, and on a good 
deal of pleasant variety along the banks : young men 
rowing or fishing; troops of naked boys bathing, as 
if this were Arcadia, in the simplicity of the Golden 
Age ; country-houses, cottages, water-side inns, all 
with something fresh about them, as not being sprin- 
kled with the dust of the highway. We were a large 
party now; for a number of additional guests had 
joined us at Folly Bridge, and we comprised poets, 
novelists, scholars, sculptors, painters, architects, men 
and women of renown, dear friends, genial, outspoken, 
open-hearted Englishmen, — all voyaging onward to- 
gether, like the wise ones of Gotham in a bowl. I re- 
member not a single annoyance, except, indeed, that a 
swarm of wasps came aboard of us and alighted on the 



NEAR OXFORD. 227 

head of one of our young gentlemen, attracted by the 
scent of the pomatum which he had been rubbing into 
his hair. He was the only victim, and his small trouble 
the one little flaw in our day's felicity, to put us in 
mind that we were mortal. 

Meanwhile a table had been laid in the interior of 
our barge, and spread with cold ham, cold fowl, cold 
pigeon-pie, cold beef, and other substantial cheer, such 
as the English love, and Yankees too, —besides tarts, 
and cakes, and pears, and plums, — not forgetting, of 
course, a goodly provision of port, sherry, and cham- 
pagne, and bitter ale, which is like mother's milk to 
an Englishman, and soon grows equally acceptable to 
his American cousin. By the time these matters had 
been properly attended to, we had arrived at that part 
of the Thames which passes by Nuneham Courtney, a 
fine estate belonging to the Harcourts, and the present 
residence of the family. Here we landed, and, climb- 
ing a steep slope from the river-side, paused a moment 
or two to look at an architectural object, called the 
Carfax, the purport of which I do not well understand. 
Thence we proceeded onward, through the loveliest 
park and woodland scenery I ever saw, and under as 
beautiful a declining sunshine as heaven ever shed 
over earth, to the stately mansion-house. 

As we here cross a private threshold, it is not allow- 
able to pursue my feeble narrative of this delightful 
day with the same freedom as heretofore ; so, perhaps, 
1 may as well bring it to a close. I may mention, 
however, that I saw the library, a fine, large apart- 
ment, hung round with portraits of eminent literary 
men, principally of the last century, most of whom 
were familiar guests of the Harcourts. The house it- 
self is about eighty years old, and is built in the clas- 



228 NEAR OXFORD. 

sic style, as if the family had been anxious to diverge 
as far as possible from the Gothic picturesqueness of 
their old abode at Stanton Harcourt. The grounds 
were laid out in part by Capability Brown, and seemed 
to me even more beautiful than those of Blenheim, 
Mason the poet, a friend of the house, gave the design 
of a portion of the garden. Of the whole place I will 
not be niggardly of my rude Transatlantic praise, but 
be bold to say that it appeared to me as perfect as 
anything earthly can be, — utterly and entirely fin- 
ished, as if the years and generations had done all 
that the hearts and minds of the successive owners 
could contrive for a spot they dearly loved. Such 
homes as Nuneham Courtney are among the splendid 
results of long hereditary possession ; and we Republi- 
cans, whose households melt away like new-fallen snow 
in a spring morning, must content ourselves with our 
many counterbalancing advantages, — for this one, so 
apparently desirable to the far-projecting selfishness of 
our nature, we are certain never to attain. 

It must not be supposed, nevertheless, that Nune- 
ham Courtney is one of the great show-places of Eng- 
land. It is merely a fair specimen of the better class 
of country-seats, and has a hundred rivals, and many 
superiors, in the features of beauty, and expansive, 
manifold, redundant comfort, which most impressed 
me. A moderate man might be content with such a 
home, — that is all. 

And now I take leave of Oxford without even an at- 
tempt to describe it, — ■ there being no literary faculty, 
attainable or conceivable by me, which can avail to 
put it adequately, or even tolerably, upon paper. It 
must remain its own sole expression ; and those whose 
sad fortune it may be never to behold it have no bet- 



NEAR OXFORD. 229 

ter resource than to dream about gray, weather-stained, 
ivy-grown edifices, wrought with quaint Gothic orna- 
ment, and standing around grassy quadrangles, where 
cloistered walks have echoed to the quiet footsteps 
of twenty generations, — lawns and gardens of luxuri- 
ous repose, shadowed with canopies of foliage, and lit 
up with sunny glimpses through archways of great 
boughs, — spires, towers, and turrets, each with its 
history and legend, — dimly magnificent chapels, with 
painted windows of rare beauty and brilliantly diver- 
sified hues, creating an atmosphere of richest gloom, 
— vast college-halls, high-windowed, oaken-panelled, 
and hung round with portraits of the men, in every 
age, whom the University has nurtured to be illustri- 
ous, — long vistas of alcoved libraries, where the wis- 
dom and learned folly of all time is shelved, — kitch- 
ens (we throw in this feature by way of ballast, and 
because it would not be English Oxford without its 
beef and beer), with huge fireplaces, capable of roast- 
ing a hundred joints at once, — and cavernous cellars, 
where rows of piled-up hogsheads seethe and fume 
with that mighty malt-liquor which is the true milk 
of Alma Mater : make all these things vivid in your 
dream, and you will never know nor believe how in- 
adequate is the result to represent even the merest 
outside of Oxford. 

We feel a genuine reluctance to conclude this ar- 
ticle without making our grateful acknowledgments, 
by name, to a gentleman whose overflowing kindness 
was the main condition of all our sight-seeings and 
enjoyments. Delightful as will always be our recol- 
lection of Oxford and its neighborhood, we partly sus- 
pect that it owes much of its happy coloring to the 
genial medium through which the objects were pre- 



230 WEAR OXFORD. 

sented to us, — to the kindly magic of a hospitality 
unsurpassed, within our experience, in the quality of 
making the guest contented with his host, with him- 
self, and everything about him. He has inseparably 
mingled his image with our remembrance of the Spires 
of Oxford. 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS,, 

We left Carlisle at a little past eleven, and within 
the half-hour were at Gretna Green. Thence we 
rushed onward into Scotland through a flat and dreary- 
tract of country, consisting mainly of desert and bog, 
where probably the moss-troopers were accustomed to 
take refuge after their raids into England. Anon, 
however, the hills hove themselves up to view, occa- 
sionally attaining a height which might almost be 
called mountainous. In about two hours we reached 
Dumfries, and alighted at the station there. 

Chill as the Scottish summer is reputed to be, we 
found it an awfully hot day, not a whit less so than 
the day before ; but we sturdily adventured through 
the burning sunshine up into the town, inquiring our 
way to the residence of Burns. The street leading 
from the station is called Shakespeare Street ; and at 
its farther extremity we read " Burns Street " on a 
corner-house, — the avenue thus designated having 
been formerly known as " Mill- Hole Brae." It is a 
vile lane, paved with small, hard stones from side to 
side, and bordered by cottages or mean houses of 
whitewashed stone, joining one to another along the 
whole length of the street. With not a tree, of course, 
or a blade of grass between the paving - stones, the 
narrow lane was as hot as Tophet, and reeked with 
a genuine Scotch odor, being infested with unwashed 
children, and altogether in a state of chronic filth; 
although some women seemed to be hopelessly scrub- 



232 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 

bing the thresholds of their wretched dwellings. 1 
never saw an outskirt of a town less fit for a poet's 
residence, or in which it would be more miserable for 
any man of cleanly predilections to spend his days. 

We asked for Burns's dwelling; and a woman 
pointed across the street to a two-story house, built of 
stone, and whitewashed, like its neighbors, but per- 
haps of a little more respectable aspect than most of 
them, though I hesitate in saying so. It was not a 
separate structure, but under the same continuous roof 
with the next. There was an inscription on the door, 
bearing no reference to Burns, but indicating that the 
house was now occupied by a ragged or industrial 
school. On knocking, we were instantly admitted by 
a servant-girl, who smiled intelligently when we told 
our errand, and showed us into a low and very plain 
parlor, not more than twelve or fifteen feet square. A 
young woman, who seemed to be a teacher in the 
school, soon appeared, and told us that this had been 
Burns's usual sitting-room, and that he had written 
many of his songs here. 

She then led us up a narrow staircase into a little 
bedchamber over the parlor. Connecting with it, 
there is a very small room, or windowed closet, which 
Burns used as a study ; and the bedchamber itself was 
the one where he slept in his later lifetime, and in 
which he died at last. Altogether, it is an exceed- 
ingly unsuitable place for a pastoral and rural poet to 
live or die in, — even more unsatisfactory than Shake- 
speare's house, which has a certain homely pictur- 
esqueness that contrasts favorably with the suburban 
sordidness of the abode before us. The narrow lane, 
the paving - stones, and the contiguity of wretched 
hovels are depressing to remember ; and the steam of 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 233 

them (such is our human weakness) might almost 
make the poet's memory less fragrant. 

As already observed, it was an intolerably hot day. 
After leaving the house, we found our way into the 
principal street of the town, which, it may be fair to 
say, is of very different aspect from the wretched out 
skirt above described. Entering a hotel (in which, 
as a Dumfries guide-book assured us, Prince Charles 
Edward had once spent a night), we rested and re- 
freshed ourselves, and then set forth in quest of the 
mausoleum of Burns. 

Coming to St. Michael's Church, we saw a man 
digging a grave, and, scrambling out of the hole, he 
let us into the churchyard, which was crowded full of 
monuments. Their general shape and construction 
are peculiar to Scotland, being a perpendicular tablet 
of marble or other stone, within a framework of the 
same material, somewhat resembling the frame of a 
looking-glass ; and, all over the churchyard, these se- 
pulchral memorials rise to the height of ten, fifteen, 
or twenty feet, forming quite an imposing collection of 
monuments, but inscribed with names of small general 
significance. It was easy, indeed, to ascertain the 
rank of those who slept below ; for in Scotland it is 
the custom to put the occupation of the buried person- 
age (as " Skinner/' " Shoemaker," " Flesher ") on his 
tombstone. As another peculiarity, wives are buried 
under their maiden names, instead of those of their 
husbands , thus giving a disagreeable impression that 
the married pair have bidden each other an eternal 
farewell on the edge of the grave. 

There was a foot-path through this crowded church 
yard, sufficiently well worn to guide us to the grave of 
Burns ; but a woman followed behind us, who, it ap- 



234 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 

peared, kept the key of the mausoleum, and was priv- 
ileged to show it to strangers. The monument is a 
sort of Grecian temple, with pilasters and a dome, 
covering a space of about twenty feet square. It was 
formerly open to all the inclemencies of the Scotch 
atmosphere, but is now protected and shut in by large 
squares of rough glass, each pane being of the size of 
one whole side of the structure. The woman unlocked 
the door, and admitted us into the interior. Inlaid 
into the floor of the mausoleum is the gravestone of 
Burns, — the very same that was laid over his grave 
by Jean Armour, before this monument was built. 
Displayed against the surrounding wall is a marble 
statue of Burns at the plough, with the Genius of Cal- 
edonia summoning the ploughman to turn poet. Me- 
thought it was not a very successful piece of work ; 
for the plough was better sculptured than the man, 
and the man, though heavy and cloddish, was more 
effective than the goddess. Our guide informed us 
that an old man of ninety, who knew Burns, certifies 
this statue to be very like the original. 

The bones of the poet, and of Jean Armour, and of 
some of their children, lie in the vault over which we 
stood. Our guide (who was intelligent, in her own 
plain way. and very agreeable to talk withal) said 
that the vault was opened about three weeks ago, on 
occasion of the burial of the eldest son of Burns. The 
poet's bones were disturbed, and the dry skull, once so 
brimming over with powerful thought and bright and 
tender fantasies, was taken away, and kept for several 
days by a Dumfries doctor. It has since been depos- 
ited in a new leaden coffin, and restored to the vault. 
We learned that there is a surviving daughter of 
Burns's eldest son, and daughters likewise of the two 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 235 

younger sons, — and, besides these, an illegitimate 
posterity by the eldest son, who appears to have been 
of disreputable life in his younger days. He inher- 
ited his father's failings, with some faint shadow, I 
have also understood, of the great qualities which 
have made the world tender of his father's vices and 
weaknesses. 

We listened readily enough to this paltry gossip, 
but found that it robbed the poet's memory of some of 
the reverence that was its due. Indeed, this talk over 
his grave had very much the same tendency and effect 
as the home-scene of his life, which we had been visit- 
ing just previously. Beholding his poor, mean dwell- 
ing and its surroundings, and picturing his outward 
life and earthly manifestations from these, one does 
not so much wonder that the people of that day should 
have failed to recognize all that was admirable and 
immortal in a disreputable, drunken, shabbily clothed, 
and shabbily housed man, consorting with associates 
of damaged character, and, as his only ostensible occu- 
pation, gauging the whiskey, which he too often tasted. 
Siding with Burns, as we needs must, in his plea 
against the world, let us try to do the world a little 
justice too. It is far easier to know and honor a poet 
when his fame has taken shape in the spotlessness of 
marble than when the actual man comes staggering 
before you, besmeared with the sordid stains of his 
daily life. For my part, I chiefly wonder that his rec- 
ognition dawned so brightly while he was still living. 
There must have been something very grand in his 
immediate presence, some strangely impressive charac- 
teristic in his natural behavior, to have caused him to 
seem like a demigod so soon. 

As we went back through the churchyard, wc saw a 



236 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 

spot where nearly four hundred inhabitants of Dum- 
fries were buried during the cholera year ; and also 
some curious old monuments, with raised letters, the 
inscriptions on which were not sufficiently legible to 
induce us to puzzle them out; but, I believe, they 
mark the resting-places of old Covenanters, some of 
whom were killed by Claverhouse and his fellow-ruf- 
fians. 

St. Michael's Church is of red freestone, and was 
built about a hundred years ago, on an old Catholic 
foundation. Our guide admitted us into it, and 
showed us, in the porch, a very pretty little marble 
figure of a child asleep, with a drapery over the lower 
part, from beneath which appeared its two baby feet. 
It was truly a sweet little statue ; and the woman told 
us that it represented a child of the sculptor, and that 
the baby (here still in its marble infancy) had died 
more than twenty-six years ago. " Many ladies," she 
said, " especially such as had ever lost a child, had 
shed tears over it." It was very pleasant to think of 
the sculptor bestowing the best of his genius and art 
to re-create his tender child in stone, and to make the 
representation as soft and sweet as the original ; but 
the conclusion of the story has something that jars 
with our awakened sensibilities. A gentleman from 
London had seen the statue, and was so much de- 
lighted with it that he -bought it of the father-artist, 
after it had lain above a quarter of a century in the 
church-porch. So this was not the real, tender image 
that came out of the father's heart ; he had sold that 
truest one for a hundred guineas, and sculptured this 
mere copy to replace it. The first figure was en- 
tirely naked in its earthly and spiritual innocence. 
The copy, as I have said above, has a drapery over 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 237 

the lower limbs. But, after all, if we come to the 
truth of the matter, the sleeping baby may be as fitly 
reposited in the drawing-room of a connoisseur as in a 
cold and dreary church-porch. 

We went into the church, and found it very plain 
and naked, without altar-decorations, and having its 
floor quite covered with unsightly wooden pews. The 
woman led us to a pew cornering on one of the side- 
aisles, and, telling us that it used to be Burns's family- 
pew, showed us his seat, which is in the corner by the 
aisle. It is so situated, that a sturdy pillar hid him 
from the pulpit, and from the minister's eye ; " for 
Robin was no great friends with the ministers," said 
she. This touch — his seat behind the pillar, and 
Burns himself nodding in sermon-time, or keenly ob- 
servant of profane things — brought him before us to 
the life. In the corner-seat of the next pew, right be- 
fore Burns, and not more than two feet off, sat the 
young lady on whom the poet saw that unmentionable 
parasite which he has immortalized in song. We were 
ungenerous enough to ask the lady's name, but the 
good woman could not tell it. This was the last 
thing which we saw in Dumfries worthy of record ; 
and it ought to be noted that our guide refused some 
money which my companion offered her, because I 
had already paid her what she deemed sufficient. 

At the railway-station wo spent more than a weary 
hour, waiting for the train, which at last came up, and 
took us to Mauchline. We got into an omnibus, the 
only conveyance to be had^ and drove about a mile to 
the village, where we established ourselves at the Lou- 
doun Hotel, one of the veriest country inns which we 
have found in Great Britain. The town of Mauch- 
line, a place more redolent of Burns than almost any 



238 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 

other, consists of a street or two of contiguous cot- 
tages, mostly white-washed, and with thatched roofs. 
It has nothing sylvan or rural in the immediate vil- 
lage, and is as ugly a place as mortal man could con- 
trive to make, or to render uglier through a succes- 
sion of untidy generations. The fashion of paving the 
village street, and patching one shabby house on the 
gable-end of another, quite shuts out all verdure and 
pleasantness ; but, I presume, we are not likely to see 
a more genuine old Scotch village, such as they used 
to be in Burns' s time, and long before, than this of 
Mauchline. The church stands about midway up the 
street, and is built of red freestone, very simple in its 
architecture, with a square tower and pinnacles. In 
this sacred edifice, and its churchyard, was the scene 
of one of Burns's most characteristic productions, 
"The Holy Fair." 

Almost directly opposite its gate, across the village 
street, stands Posie Nansie's inn, where the " Jolly 
Beggars " congregated. The latter is a two-story, red- 
stone, thatched house, looking old, but by no means 
venerable, like a drunken patriarch. It has small, old- 
fashioned windows, and may well have stood for cen- 
turies, — though, seventy or eighty years ago, when 
Burns was conversant with it, I should fancy it might 
have been something better than a beggars' alehouse. 
The whole town of Mauchline looks rusty and time- 
worn, — even the newer houses, of which there are 
several, being shadowed and darkened by the general 
aspect of the place. When we arrived, all the wretched 
little dwellings seemed to have belched forth their in- 
habitants into the warm summer evening : everybody 
was chatting with everybody, on the most familiar 
terms ; the bare-legged children gambolled or quar- 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BUBNS. 239 

relied uproariously, and came freely, moreover, and 
looked into the window of our parlor. When we ven- 
tured out, we were followed by the gaze of the old 
town: people standing in their doorways, old women 
popping their heads from the chamber- windows, and 
stalwart men — idle on Saturday at e'en, after their 
week's hard labor — clustering at the street-corners, 
merely to stare at our unpretending selves. Except 
in some remote little town of Italy (where, besides, 
the inhabitants had the intelligible stimulus of beg- 
gary), I have never been honored with nearly such an 
amount of public notice. 

The next forenoon my companion put me to shame 
by attending church, after vainly exhorting me to do 
the like ; and it being Sacrament Sunday, and my 
poor friend being wedged into the farther end of a 
closely filled pew, he was forced to stay through the 
preaching of four several sermons, and came back per- 
fectly exhausted and desperate. He was somewhat con- 
soled, however, on finding that he had witnessed a spec- 
tacle of Scotch manners identical with that of Burns's 
" Holy Fair " on the very spot where the poet located 
that immortal description. By way of further con- 
formance to the customs of the country, we ordered a 
sheep's head and the broth, and did penance accord- 
ingly ; and at five o'clock we took a fly, and set out 
for Burns's farm of Moss Giel. 

Moss Giel is not more than a mile from Mauchline, 
and the road extends over a high ridge of land, with a 
view of far hills and green slopes on either side. Just 
before we reached the farm, the driver stopped to 
point out a hawthorn, growing by the wayside, which 
he said was Burns's u Lousie Thorn " ; and I devoutly 
plucked a branch, although I have really forgotten 



240 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 

where or how this illustrious shrub has been cele- 
brated. We then turned into a rude gateway, and 
almost immediately came to the farm-house of Moss 
Giel, standing some fifty yards removed from the high- 
road, behind a tall hedge of hawthorn, and consider- 
ably overshadowed by trees. The house is a white 
washed stone cottage, like thousands of others in Eng- 
land and Scotland, with a thatched roof, on which 
grass and weeds have intruded a picturesque, though 
alien growth. There is a door and one window in 
front, besides another little window that peeps out 
among the thatch. Close by the cottage, and extend- 
ing back at right angles from it, so as to enclose the 
farm-yard, are two other buildings of the same size, 
shape, and general appearance as the house : any one 
of the three looks just as fit for a human habitation as 
the two others, and all three look still more suitable 
for donkey-stables and pigsties. As we drove into the 
farm-yard, bounded on three sides by these three hov- 
els, a large dog began to bark at us ; and some women 
and children made their appearance, but seemed to de- 
mur about admitting us, because the master and mis- 
tress were very religious people, and had not yet come 
back from the Sacrament at Mauchline. 

However, it would not do to be turned back from the 
very threshold of Robert Burns ; and as the women 
seemed to be merely straggling visitors, 'and nobody? 
at all events, had a right to send us away, we went 
into the back door, and, turning to the right, entered a 
kitchen. It showed a deplorable lack of housewifely 
neatness, and in it there were three or four children, 
one of whom, a girl eight or nine years old, held a 
baby in her arms. She proved to be the daughter of 
the people of the house, and gave us what leave sbe 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 241 

could to look about us. Thence we stepped across the 
narrow mid-passage of the cottage into the only other 
apartment below stairs, a sitting-room, where we found 
a young man eating bread and cheese. He informed 
us that he did not live there, and had only called in to 
refresh himself on his way home from church. This 
room, like the kitchen, was a noticeably poor one, and, 
besides being all that the cottage had to show for a 
parlor, it was a sleeping-apartment, having two beds, 
which might be curtained off, on occasion. The young 
man allowed us liberty (so far as in him lay) to go up 
stairs. Up we crept, accordingly ; and a few steps 
brought us to the top of the staircase, over the kitchen, 
where we found the wretchedest little sleeping-cham- 
ber in the world, with a sloping roof under the thatch, 
and two beds spread upon the bare floor. This, most 
probably, was Burns's chamber ; or, perhaps, it may 
have been that of his mother's servant-maid ; and, in 
either case, this rude floor, at one time or another, 
must have creaked beneath the poet's midnight tread. 
On the opposite side of the passage was the door of 
another attic-chamber, opening which, I saw a consid- 
erable number of cheeses on the floor. 

The whole house was pervaded with a frowzy smell, 
and also a dunghill odor ; and it is not easy to under- 
stand how the atmosphere of such a dwelling can be 
any more agreeable or salubrious morally than it ap- 
peared to be physically. No virgin, surely, could keep 
a holy awe about her while stowed higgledy-piggledy 
with coarse-natured rustics into this narrowness and 
filth. Such a habitation is calculated to make beasts 
of men and women ; and it indicates a degree of bar- 
barism which I did not imagine to exist in Scotland, 
that a tiller of broad fields, like the farmer of Mauch- 

VOL. vii- 16 



242 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 

line, should have his abode in a pigsty. It is sad to 
think of anybody — not to say a poet, but any human 
being — sleeping, eating, thinking, praying, and spend- 
ing all his home-life in this miserable hovel ; but, me- 
thinks, I never in the least knew how to estimate the 
miracle of Burns's genius, nor his heroic merit for be- 
ing no worse man, until I thus learned the squalid 
hindrances amid which he developed himself. Space, 
a free atmosphere, and cleanliness have a vast deal to 
do with the possibilities of human virtue. 

The biographers talk of the farm of Moss Giel as 
being damp and unwholesome ; but I do not see why, 
outside of the cottage-walls, it should possess so evil 
a reputation. It occupies a high, broad ridge, enjoy- 
ing, surely, whatever benefit can come of a breezy site, 
and sloping far downward before any marshy soil is 
reached. The high hedge, and the trees that stand 
beside the cottage, give it a pleasant aspect enough to 
one who does not know the grimy secrets of the inte- 
rior ; and the summer afternoon was now so bright 
that I shall remember the scene with a great deal of 
sunshine over it. 

Leaving the cottage, we drove through a field, which 
the driver told us was that in which Burns turned up 
the mouse's nest. It is the enclosure nearest to the 
cottage, and seems now to be a pasture, and a rather 
remarkably unfertile one. A little farther on, the 
ground was whitened with an immense number of 
daisies, — daisies, daisies everywhere ; and in answer 
to my inquiry, the driver said that this was the field 
where Burns ran his ploughshare over the daisy. If 
so, the soil seems to have been consecrated to daisies 
by the song which he bestowed on that first immortal 
one. I alighted, and plucked a whole handful of these 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 243 

" wee, modest, crimson-tipped flowers," which will be 
precious to many friends in our own country as com- 
ing from Burns's farm, and being of the same race 
and lineage as that daisy which he turned into an am- 
aranthine flower while seeming to destroy it. 

From Moss Giel we drove through a variety of 
pleasant scenes, some of which were familiar to us by 
their connection with Burns. We skirted, too, along 
a portion of the estate of Auchinleck, which still be- 
longs to the Boswell family, — the present possessor 
being Sir James Boswell, 1 a grandson of Johnson's 
friend, and son of the Sir Alexander who was killed 
in a duel. Our driver spoke of Sir James as a kind, 
free-hearted man, but addicted to horse-races and 
similar pastimes, and a little too familiar with the 
wine-cup ; so that poor Bozzy's booziness would appear 
to have become hereditary in his ancient line. There 
is no male heir to the estate of Auchinleck. The por- 
tion of the lands which we saw is covered with wood 
and much undermined with rabbit-warrens ; nor, though 
the territory extends over a large number of acres, is 
the income very considerable. 

By and by we came to the spot where Burns saw 
Miss Alexander, the Lass of Ballochmyle. It was on 
a bridge, which (or, more probably, a bridge that has 
succeeded to the old one, and is made of iron) crosses 
from bank to bank, high in air over a deep gorge of 
the road ; so that the young lady may have appeared 
to Burns like a creature between earth and sky, and 
compounded chiefly of celestial elements. But, in 
honest truth, the great charm of a woman, in Burns's 
eyes, was always her womanhood, and not the angelic 
mixture which other poets find in her. 

1 Sir James Boswell is now dead. 



244 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 

Our driver pointed out the course taken by the Lass 
of Ballochmyle, through the shrubbery, to a rock on 
the banks of the Lugar, where it seems to be the tra- 
dition that Burns accosted her. The song implies no 
such interview. Lovers, of whatever condition, high 
or low, could desire no lovelier scene in which to 
breathe their vows : the river flowing over its pebbly 
bed, sometimes gleaming into the sunshine, sometimes 
hidden deep in verdure, and here and there eddying 
at the foot of high and precipitous cliffs. This beau- 
tiful estate of Ballochmyle is still held by the family of 
Alexanders, to whom Burns's song has given renown 
on cheaper terms than any other set of people ever 
attained it. How slight the tenure seems ! A young 
lady happened to walk out, one summer afternoon, 
and crossed the path of a neighboring farmer, who 
celebrated the little incident in four or five warm, 
rude, — at least, not refined, though rather ambitious, 
— and somewhat ploughman-like verses. Burns has 
written hundreds of better things ; but henceforth, for 
centuries, that maiden has free admittance into the 
dream-land of Beautiful Women, and she and all her 
race are famous. I should like to know the present 
head of the family, and ascertain what value, if any, 
the members of it put upon the celebrity thus won. 

We passed through Catrine, known hereabouts as 
" the clean village of Scotland." Certainly, as regards 
the point indicated, it has greatly the advantage of 
Mauchline, whither we now returned without seeing 
anything else worth writing about. 

There was a rain-storm during the night, and, in 
the morning, the rusty, old, sloping street of Mauch- 
line was glistening with wet, while frequent showers 
came spattering down. The intense heat of many 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 245 

days past was exchanged for a chilly atmosphere, 
much more suitable to a stranger's idea of what Scotch 
temperature ought to be. We found, after breakfast, 
that the first train northward had already gone by, 
and that we must wait till nearly two o'clock for the 
next. I merely ventured out once, during the fore- 
noon, and took a brief walk through the village, in 
which I have left little to describe. Its chief business 
appears to be the manufacture of snuff-boxes. There 
are perhaps five or six shops, or more, including those 
licensed to sell only tea and tobacco ; the best of them 
have the characteristics of village stores in the United 
States, dealing in a small way with an extensive 
variety of articles. I peeped into the open gateway 
of the churchyard, and saw that the ground was ab- 
solutely stuffed with dead people, and the surface 
crowded with gravestones, both perpendicular and 
horizontal. All Burns's old Mauchline acquaintance 
are doubtless there, and the Armours among them, 
except Bonny Jean, who sleeps by her poet's side. 
The family of Armour is now extinct in Mauchline. 

Arriving at the railway-station, we found a tall, el- 
derly, comely gentleman walking to and fro and wait- 
ing for the train. He proved to be a Mr. Alexander, 
— it may fairly be presumed the Alexander of Bal- 
lochmyle, a blood relation of the lovely lass. Wonder- 
ful efficacy of a poet's verse, that could shed a glory 
from Long Ago on this old gentleman's white hair ! 
These Alexanders, by the by, are not an old family on 
the Ballochmyle estate ; the father of the lass having 
made a fortune in trade, and established himself as the 
first landed proprietor of his name in these parts. The 
original family was named Whitefoord. 

Our ride to Ayr presented nothing very remarkable ; 



246 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 

and, indeed, a cloudy and rainy day takes the varnish 
off the scenery, and causes a woful diminution in the 
beauty and impressiveness of everything we see. Much 
of our way lay along a flat, sandy level, in a southerly 
direction. We reached Ayr in the midst of hopeless 
rain, and drove to the King's Arms Hotel. In the 
intervals of showers I took peeps at the town, which 
appeared to have many modern or modern-fronted 
edifices ; although there are likewise tall, gray, gabled, 
and quaint-looking houses in the by-streets, here and 
there, betokening an ancient place. The town lies on 
both sides of the Ayr, which is here broad and stately, 
and bordered with dwellings that look from their win- 
dows directly down into the passing tide. 

I crossed the river by a modern and handsome stone 
bridge, and recrossed it, at no great distance, by a 
venerable structure of four gray arches, which must 
have bestridden the stream ever since the early days 
of Scottish history. These are the "Two Briggs of 
Ayr," whose midnight conversation was overheard by 
Burns, while other auditors were aware only of the 
rush and rumble of the wintry stream among the 
arches. The ancient bridge is steep and narrow, and 
paved like a street, and defended by a parapet of red 
freestone, except at the two ends, where some mean 
old shops allow scanty room for the pathway to creep 
between. Nothing else impressed me hereabouts, un- 
less I mention that, during the rain, the women and 
girls went about the streets of Ayr barefooted to save 
their shoes. 

The next morning wore a lowering aspect as if it 
felt itself destined to be one of many consecutive days 
of storm. After a good Scotch breakfast, however, of 
fresh herrings and eggs, we took a fly, and started at 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 247 

a little past ten for the banks of the Doon. On our 
way, at about two miles from Ayr, we drew up at a 
roadside cottage, on which was an inscription to the 
effect that Robert Burns was born within its walls. 
It is now a public house ; and, of course, we alighted 
and entered its little sitting - room, which, as we at 
present see it, is a neat apartment with the modern 
improvement of a ceiling. The walls are much over- 
scribbled with names of visitors, and the wooden door 
of a cupboard in the wainscot, as well as all the other 
wood-work of the room, is cut and carved with initial 
letters. So, likewise, are two tables, which, having 
received a coat of varnish over the inscriptions, form 
really curious and interesting articles of furniture. I 
have seldom (though I do not personally adopt this 
mode of illustrating my humble name) felt inclined to 
ridicule the natural impulse of most people thus to 
record themselves at the shrines of poets and heroes. 

On a panel, let into the wall in a corner of the room, 
is a portrait of Burns, copied from the original picture 
by Nasmyth. The floor of this apartment is of boards, 
which are probably a recent substitute for the ordi- 
nary flag-stones of a peasant's cottage. There is but 
one other room pertaining to the genuine birthplace of 
Robert Burns: it is the kitchen, into which we now 
went. It has a floor of flag-stones, even ruder than 
those of Shakespeare's house, — though, perhaps, not 
so strangely cracked and broken as the latter, over 
which the hoof of Satan himself might seem to have 
been trampling. A new window has been opened 
through the wall, towards the road ; but on the opposite 
side is the little original window, of only four small 
panes, through which came the first daylight that shone 
upon the Scottish poet. At the side of the room, op- 



248 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 

posite the fireplace, is a recess, containing a bed, which 
can be hidden by curtains. In that humble nook, of 
all places in the world, Providence was pleased to de- 
posit the germ of richest human life which mankind 
then had within its circumference. 

These two rooms, as I have said, make up the whole 
sum and substance of Burns's birthplace : for there 
were no chambers, nor even attics ; and the thatched 
roof formed the only ceiling of kitchen and sitting- 
room, the height of which was that of the whole house. 
The cottage, however, is attached to another edifice of 
the same size and description, as these little habita- 
tions often are ; and, moreover, a splendid addition 
has been made to it, since the poet's renown began to 
draw visitors to the wayside alehouse. The old wo- 
man of the house led us through an entry, and showed 
a vaulted hall, of no vast dimensions, to be sure, but 
marvellously large and splendid as compared with 
what might be anticipated from the outward aspect of 
the cottage. It contained a bust of Burns, and was 
hung round with pictures and engravings, principally 
illustrative of his life and poems. In this part of the 
house, too, there is a parlor, fragrant with tobacco- 
smoke ; and, no doubt, many a noggin of whiskey is 
here quaffed to the memory of the bard, who professed 
to draw so much inspiration from that potent liquor. 

We bought some engravings of Kirk Alloway, the 
Bridge of Doon, and the monument, and gave the old 
woman a fee besides, and took our leave. A very short 
drive farther brought us within sight of the monu- 
ment, and to the hotel, situated close by the entrance 
of the ornamental grounds within which the former is 
enclosed. We rang the bell at the gate of the enclos- 
ure, but were forced to wait a considerable time ; be. 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 249 

cause the old man, the regular superintendent of the 
spot, had gone to assist at the laying of the corner- 
stone of a new kirk. He appeared anon, and admit- 
ted us, but immediately hurried away to be present at 
the concluding ceremonies, leaving us locked up with 
Burns. 

The enclosure around the monument is beautifully 
laid out as an ornamental garden, and abundantly pro- 
vided with rare flowers and shrubbery, all tended with 
loving care. The monument stands on an elevated 
site, and consists of a massive basement-story, three- 
sided, above which rises a light and elegant Grecian 
temple, — a mere dome, supported on Corinthian pil- 
lars, and open to all the winds. The edifice is beauti- 
ful in itself ; though I know not what peculiar appro- 
priateness it may have, as the memorial of a Scottish 
rural poet. 

The door of the basement-story stood open ; and, 
entering, we saw a bust of Burns in a niche, looking 
keener, more refined, but not so warm and whole-souled 
as his pictures usually do. I think the likeness can- 
not be good. In the centre of the room stood a glass 
case, in which were reposited the two volumes of the 
little Pocket Bible that Burns gave to Highland Mary, 
when they pledged their troth to one another. It is 
poorly printed, on coarse paper. A verse of Scripture, 
referring to the solemnity and awfulness of vows, is 
written within the cover of each volume, in the poet's 
own hand ; and fastened to one of the covers is a 
lock of Highland Mary's golden hair. This Bible had 
been carried to America by one of her relatives, but 
was sent back to be fitly treasured here. 

There is a staircase within the monument, by which 
we ascended to the top, and had a view of both Briggs 



250 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BUBNS. 

of Doon ; the scene of Tarn O'Shanter's misadventure 
being close at hand. Descending, we wandered through 
the enclosed garden, and came to a little building in a 
corner, on entering which, we found the two statues of 
Tarn and Sutor Wat, — ponderous stone-work enough, 
yet permeated in a remarkable degree with living 
warmth and jovial hilarity. From this part of the 
garden, too, we again beheld the old Brigg of Doon, 
over which Tarn galloped in such imminent and awful 
peril. It is a beautiful object in the landscape, with 
one high, graceful arch, ivy -grown, and shadowed all 
over and around with foliage. 

When we had waited a good while, the old gardens* 
came, telling us that he had heard an excellent prayer 
at laying the corner - stone of the new kirk. He now 
gave us some roses and sweetbrier, and let us out from 
his pleasant garden. We immediately hastened to 
Kirk Alloway, which is within two or three minutes' 
walk of the monument. A few steps ascend from the 
roadside, through a gate, into the old graveyard, in 
the midst of which stands the kirk. The edifice is 
wholly roofless, but the side -walls and gable -ends 
are quite entire, though portions of them are evidently 
modern restorations. Never was there a plainer little 
church, or one with smaller architectural pretensions ; 
no New England meeting-house has more simplicity in 
its very self, though poetry and fun have clambered 
and clustered so wildly over Kirk Alloway that it is 
difficult to see it as it actually exists. By the by, I do 
not understand why Satan and an assembly of witches 
should hold their revels within a consecrated pre- 
cinct ; but the weird scene has so established itself in 
the world's imaginative faith that it must be accepted 
as an authentic incident, in spite of rule and reason 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 251 

to the contrary. Possibly, some carnal minister, some 
priest of pious aspect and hidden infidelity, had dis- 
pelled the consecration of the holy edifice by his pre- 
tence of prayer, and thus made it the resort of un- 
happy ghosts and sorcerers and devils. 

The interior of the kirk, even now, is applied to 
quite as impertinent a purpose as when Satan and the 
witches used it as a dancing-hall ; for it is divided in 
the midst by a wall of stone-masonry, and each com- 
partment has been converted into a family burial-place. 
The name on one of the monuments is Crawf urd ; the 
other bore no inscription. It is impossible not to feel 
that these good people, whoever they may be, had no 
business to thrust their prosaic bones into a spot that 
belongs to the world, and where their presence jars 
with the emotions, be they sad or gay, which the 
pilgrim brings thither. They shut us out from our 
own precincts, too, — from that inalienable possession 
which Burns bestowed in free gift upon mankind, by 
taking it from the actual earth and annexing it to 
the domain of imagination. And here these wretched 
squatters have lain down to their long sleep, after bar- 
ring each of the two doorways of the kirk with an 
iron grate ! May their rest be troubled, till they rise 
and let us in ! 

Kirk Alloway is inconceivably small, considering 
now large a space it fills in our imagination before we 
see it. I paced its length, outside of the wall, and 
found it only seventeen of my paces, and not more 
than ten of them in breadth. There seem to have 
been but very few windows, all of which, if I rightly 
remember, are now blocked up with mason-work of 
stone. One mullioned window, tall and narrow, in 
the eastern gable, might have been seen by Tarn 



252 SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 

O'Shanter, blazing with devilish light, as he ap- 
proached along the road from Ayr; and there is a 
small and square one, on the side nearest the road, 
into which he might have peered, as hfc sat on horse- 
back. Indeed, I could easily have looked through it, 
standing on the ground, had not the opening been 
walled up. There is an odd kind of belfry at the 
peak of one of the gables, with the small bell still 
hanging in it. And this is all that I remember of 
Kirk Alloway, except that the stones of its material 
are gray and irregular. 

The road from Ayr passes Alloway Kirk, and 
crosses the Doon by a modern bridge, without swerv- 
ing much from a straight line. To reach the old 
bridge, it appears to have made a bend, shortly after 
passing the kirk, and then to have turned sharply to- 
wards the river. The new bridge is within a minute's 
walk of the monument ; and we went thither, and 
leaned over its parapet to admire the beautiful Doon, 
flowing wildly and sweetly between its deep and 
wooded banks. I never saw a lovelier scene ; although 
this might have been even lovelier if a kindly sun had 
shone upon it. The ivy-grown, ancient bridge, with its 
high arch, through which we had a picture of the river 
and the green banks beyond, was absolutely the most 
picturesque object, in a quiet and gentle way, that ever 
blessed my eyes. Bonny Doon, with its wooded banks, 
and the boughs dipping into the water ! The mem- 
ory of them, at this moment, affects me like the song 
of birds, and Burns crooning some verses, simple and 
wild, in accordance with their native melody. 

It was impossible to depart without crossing the very 
bridge of Tarn's adventure ; so we went thither, over a 
now disused portion of the road, and, standing on the 



SOME OF THE HAUNTS OF BURNS. 253 

centre of the arch, gathered some ivy- leaves from that 
sacred spot. This done, we returned as speedily as 
might be to Ayr, whence, taking the rail, we soon be- 
held Ailsa Craig rising like a pyramid out of the sea. 
Drawing nearer to Glasgow, Ben Lomond hove in 
sight, with a dome-like summit, supported by a shoul- 
der on each side. But a man is better than a moun- 
tain ; and we had been holding intercourse, if not with 
the reality, at least with the stalwart ghost of one of 
Earth's memorable sons, amid the scenes where he 
lived and sung. We shall appreciate him better as a 
poet, hereafter ; for there is no writer whose life, as 
a man, has so much to do with his fame, and throws 
such a necessary light upon whatever he has produced. 
Henceforth, there will be a personal warmth for us in 
everything that he wrote ; and, like his countrymen, 
we shall know him in a kind of personal way, as if we 
had shaken hands with him, and felt the thrill of his 
actual voice. 



A LONDON SUBURB. 

One of our English summers looks, in the retro- 
spect, as if it had been patched with more frequent 
sunshine than the sky of England ordinarily affords ; 
but I believe that it may be only a moral effect, — a 
" light that never was on sea nor land," — caused by 
our having found a particularly delightful abode in the 
neighborhood of London. In order to enjoy it, how- 
ever, I was compelled to solve the problem of living in 
two places at once, — an impossibility which I so far 
accomplished as to vanish, at frequent intervals, out 
of men's sight and knowledge on one side of Eng- 
land, and take my place in a circle of familiar faces 
on the other, so quietly that I seemed to have been 
there all along. It was the easier to get accustomed 
to our new residence, because it was not only rich in 
all the material properties of a home, but had also the 
home-like atmosphere, the household element, which is 
of too intangible a character to be let even with the 
most thoroughly furnished lodging-house. A friend 
had given us his suburban residence, with all its con- 
veniences, elegances, and snuggeries, — its drawing- 
rooms and library, still warm and bright with the rec- 
ollection of the genial presences that we had known 
there, — its closets, chambers, kitchen, and even its 
wine-cellar, if we could have availed ourselves of so 
dear and delicate a trust, — its lawn and cosey garden- 
nooks, and whatever else makes up the multitudinous 
idea of an English home, — he had transferred it all 



A LONDON SUBURB. 255 

to us, pilgrims and dusty wayfarers, that we might 
rest and take our ease during his summer's absence on 
the Continent. We had long been dwelling in tents, 
as it were, and morally shivering by hearths which, 
heap the bituminous coal upon them as we might, no 
blaze could render cheerful. I remember, to this day, 
the dreary feeling with which I sat by our first English 
fireside, and watched the chill and rainy twilight of an 
autumn day darkening down upon the garden ; wjiile 
the portrait of the preceding occupant of the house 
(evidently a most unamiable personage in his lifetime) 
scowled inhospitably from above the mantel-piece, as 
if indignant that an American should try to make him- 
self at home there. Possibly it may appease his sulky 
shade to know that I quitted his abode as much a 
stranger as I entered it. But now, at last, we were 
in a genuine British home, where refined and warm- 
hearted people had just been living their daily life, 
and had left us a summer's inheritance of slowly ri- 
pened days, such as a stranger's hasty opportunities so 
seldom permit him to enjoy. 

Within so trifling a distance of the central spot of 
all the world (which, as Americans have at present no 
centre of their own, we may allow to be somewhere 
in the vicinity, we will say, of St. Paul's Cathedral), 
it might have seemed natural that I should be tossed 
about by the turbulence of the vast London whirlpool. 
But I had drifted into a still eddy, where conflicting 
movements made a repose, and, wearied with a good 
deal of uncongenial activity, I found the quiet of my 
temporary haven more attractive than anything that 
the great town could offer. I already knew London 
well ; that is to say, I had long ago satisfied (so far as 
it was capable of satisfaction) that mysterious yearn- 



256 A LONDON SUBURB. 

ing — the magnetism of millions of hearts operating 
upon one — which impels every man's individuality to 
mingle itself with the immensest mass of human life 
within his scope. Day after day, at an earlier period, 
I had trodden the thronged thoroughfares, the broad, 
lonely squares, the lanes, alleys, and strange labyrin- 
thine courts, the parks, the gardens and enclosures of 
ancient studious societies, so retired and silent amid 
the city uproar, the markets, the foggy streets along 
the river-side, the bridges, — I had sought all parts of 
the metropolis, in short, with an unweariable and in- 
discriminating curiosity ; until few of the native in- 
habitants, I fancy, had turned so many of its corners 
as myself. These aimless wanderings (in which my 
prime purpose and achievement were to lose my way, 
and so to find it the more surely) had brought me, at 
one time or another, to the sight and actual presence 
of almost all the objects and renowned localities that 
I had read about, and which had made London the 
dream-city of my youth. I had found it better than 
my dream ; for there is nothing else in life compar- 
able (in that species of enjoyment, I mean) to the 
thick, heavy, oppressive, sombre delight which an 
American is sensible of, hardly knowing whether to 
call it a pleasure or a pain, in the atmosphere of Lon- 
don. The result was, that I acquired a home-feeling 
there, as nowhere else in the world, — though after- 
wards I came to have a somewhat similar sentiment 
in regard to Rome ; and as long as either of those two 
great cities shall exist, the cities of the Past and of 
the Present, a man's native soil may crumble beneath 
his feet without leaving him altogether homeless upon 
earth. 

Thus, having once fully yielded to its influence, I 



A LONDON SUBURB. 257 

was in a manner free of the city, and could approach 
or keep away from it as I pleased. Hence it hap- 
pened, that, living within a quarter of an hour's 
rush of the London Bridge Terminus, I was oftener 
tempted to spend a whole summer-day in our garden 
than to seek anything new or old, wonderful or com- 
monplace, beyond its precincts. It was a delightful 
garden, of no great extent, but comprising a good 
many facilities for repose and enjoyment, such as ar- 
bors and garden - seats, shrubbery, flower-beds, rose- 
bushes in a profusion of bloom, pinks, poppies, gerani- 
ums, sweet-peas, and a variety of other scarlet, yellow, 
blue, and purple blossoms, which I did not trouble 
myself to recognize individually, yet had always a 
vague sense of their beauty about me. The dim sky 
of England has a most happy effect on the coloring of 
flowers, blending richness with delicacy in the same 
texture; but in this garden, as everywhere else, the 
exuberance of English verdure had a greater charm 
than any tropical splendor or diversity of hue. The 
hunger for natural beauty might be satisfied with 
grass and green leaves forever. Conscious of the 
triumph of England in this respect, and loyally anx- 
ious for the credit of my own country, it gratified me 
to observe what trouble and pains the English gar- 
deners are fain to throw away in producing a few sour 
plums and abortive pears and apples, — as, for ex- 
ample, in this very garden, where a row of unhappy 
trees were spread out perfectly flat against a brick 
wall, looking as if impaled alive, or crucified, with a 
cruel and unattainable purpose of compelling them to 
produce rich fruit by torture. For my part, I never 
ate an English fruit, raised in the open air, that could 
compare in flavor with a Yankee turnip. 

VOL. VII. 17 



258 A LONDON SUBURB. 

The garden included that prime feature of English 
domestic scenery, a lawn. It had been levelled, care- 
fully shorn, and converted into a bowling-green, on 
which we sometimes essayed to practise the time-hon- 
ored game of bowls, most unskilfully, yet not without 
a perception that it involves a very pleasant mixture 
of exercise and ease, as is the case with most of the 
old English pastimes. Oar little domain was shut in 
by the house on one side, and in other directions by a 
hedge-fence and a brick wall, which last was concealed 
or softened by shrubbery and the impaled fruit-trees 
already mentioned. Over all the outer region, beyond 
our immediate precincts, there was. an abundance of 
foliage, tossed aloft from the near or distant trees 
with which that agreeable suburb is adorned. The ef- 
fect was wonderfully sylvan and rural, insomuch that 
we might have fancied ourselves in the depths of a 
wooded seclusion ; only that, at brief intervals, we 
could hear the galloping sweep of a railway-train pass- 
ing within a quarter of a mile, and its discordant 
screech, moderated by a little farther distance, as it 
reached the Blackheath Station. That harsh, rough 
sound, seeking me out so inevitably, was the voice of 
the great world summoning me forth. I know not 
whether I was the more pained or pleased to be thus 
constantly put in mind of the neighborhood of Lon- 
don ; for, on the one hand, my conscience stung me a 
little for reading a book, or playing with children in 
the grass, when there were so many better things for 
an enlightened traveller to do, — while, at the same 
time, it gave a deeper delight to my luxurious idle- 
ness, to contrast it with the turmoil which I escaped. 
On the whole, however, I do not repent of a single 
wasted hour, and only wish that I could have spent 



A LONDON SUBURB. 259 

twice as many in the same way; for the impression on 
my memory is, that I was as happy in that hospitable 
garden as the English summer-day was long. 

One chief condition of my enjoyment was the 
weather. Italy has nothing like it, nor America, 
There never was such weather except in England, 
where, in requital of a vast amount of horrible east- 
wind between February and June, and a brown Oc- 
tober and black November, and a wet, chill, sunless 
winter, there are a few weeks of incomparable sum- 
mer, scattered through July and August, and the ear- 
lier portion of September, small in quantity, but ex- 
quisite enough to atone for the whole year's atmos- 
pherical delinquencies. After all, the prevalent som- 
breness may have brought out those sunny intervals 
in such high relief, that I see them, in my recollection, 
brighter than they really were : a little light makes a 
glory for people who live habitually in a gray gloom. 
The English, however, do not seem to know Kow en- 
joyable the momentary gleams of their summer are ; 
they call it broiling weather, and hurry to the seaside 
with red, perspiring faces, in a state of combustion 
and deliquescence ; and I have observed that even 
their cattle have similar susceptibilities, seeking the 
deepest shade, or standing midleg deep in pools and 
streams to cool themselves, at temperatures which our 
own cows would deem little more than barely comfort- 
able. To myself, after the summer heats of my na- 
tive land had somewhat effervesced out of my blood 
and memory, it was the weather of Paradise itself. 
It might be a little too warm ; but it was that mod- 
est and inestimable superabundance which constitutes 
a bounty of Providence, instead of just a niggardly 
enough. During my first year in England, residing 



260 A LONDON SUBURB. 

in perhaps the most ungenial part of the kingdom, 1 
could never be quite comfortable without a fire on the 
hearth ; in the second twelvemonth, beginning to get 
acclimatized, I became sensible of an austere friendli- 
ness, shy, but sometimes almost tender, in the veiled, 
shadowy, seldom smiling summer ; and in the succeed- 
ing years, — whether that I had renewed my fibre 
with English beef and replenished my blood with 
English ale, or whatever were the cause, — I grew 
content with winter and especially in love with sum- 
mer, desiring little more for happiness than merely to 
breathe and bask. At the midsummer which we are 
now speaking of, I must needs confess that the noon- 
tide sun came down more fervently than I found al- 
together tolerable; so that I was fain to shift my 
position with the shadow of the shrubbery, making 
myself the movable index of a sundial that reckoned 
up the hours of an almost interminable day. 

For *each day seemed endless, though never weari- 
some. As far as your actual experience is concerned, 
the English summer-day has positively no beginning 
and no end. When you awake, at any reasonable 
hour, the sun is already shining through the curtains ; 
you live through unnumbered hours of Sabbath quie- 
tude, with a calm variety of incident softly etched 
upon their tranquil lapse ; and at length you become 
conscious that it is bedtime again, while there is still 
enough daylight in the sky to make the pages of your 
book distinctly legible. Night, if there be any such 
season, hangs down a transparent veil through which 
the by-gone day beholds its successor ; or, if not quite 
true of the latitude of London, it may be soberly af- 
firmed of the more northern parts of the island, that 
To-morrow is born before its Yesterday is dead. They 



A LONDON SUBURB. 261 

exist together in the golden twilight, where the de- 
crepit old day dimly discerns the face of the ominous 
infant; and you, though a mere mortal, may simul- 
taneously touch them both with one finger of recollec- 
tion and another of prophecy. I cared not how long 
the day might be, nor how many of them. I had 
earned this repose by a long course of irksome toil and 
perturbation, and could have been content never to 
stray out of the limits of that suburban villa and its 
garden. If I lacked anything beyond, it would have 
satisfied me well enough to dream about it, instead of 
struggling for its actual possession. At least, this was 
the feeling of the moment ; although the transitory, 
flitting, and irresponsible character of my life there 
was perhaps the most enjoyable element of all, as al- 
lowing me much of the comfort of house and home, 
without any sense of their weight upon my back. The 
nomadic life has great advantages, if we can find tents 
ready pitched for us at every stage. 

So much for the interior of our abode, — a spot of 
deepest quiet, within reach of the intensest activity. 
But, even when we stepped beyond our own gate, we 
were not shocked with any immediate presence of the 
great world. We were dwelling in one of those oases 
that have grown up (in comparatively recent years, I 
believe) on the wide waste of Blackheath, which other- 
wise offers a vast extent of unoccupied ground in sin- 
gular proximity to the metropolis. As a general thing, 
the proprietorship of the soil seems to exist in every- 
body and nobody ; but exclusive rights have been ob- 
tained, here and there, chiefly by men whose daily con- 
cerns link them with London, so that you find their 
villas or boxes standing along village streets which 
have often more of an American aspect than the elder 



262 A LONDON SUBURB. 

English settlements. The scene is semi-rural. Orna- 
mental trees overshadow the sidewalks, and grassy mar- 
gins border the wheel-tracks. The houses, to be sure, 
have certain points of difference from those of an 
American village, bearing tokens of architectural de- 
sign, though seldom of individual taste ; and, as far as 
possible, they stand aloof from the street, and sepa- 
rated each from its neighbor by hedge or fence, in ac- 
cordance with the careful exclusiveness of the English 
character, which impels the occupant, moreover, to 
cover the front of his dwelling with as much conceal- 
ment of shrubbery as his limits will allow. Through 
the interstices, you catch glimpses of well-kept lawns, 
generally ornamented with flowers, and with what the 
English call rock -work, being heaps of ivy -grown 
stones and fossils, designed for romantic effect in a 
small way. Two or three of such village streets as are 
here described take a collective name, — as, for in- 
stance, Blackheath Park, — and constitute a kind of 
community of residents, with gateways, kept by a 
policeman, and a semi-privacy, stepping beyond which, 
you find yourself on the breezy heath. 

On this great, bare, dreary common I often went 
astray, as I afterwards did on the Campagna of Rome, 
and drew the air (tainted with London smoke though 
it might be) into my lungs by deep inspirations, with 
a strange and unexpected sense of desert freedom. 
The misty atmosphere helps you to fancy a remoteness 
that perhaps does not quite exist. During the little 
time that it lasts, the solitude is as impressive as that 
of a Western prairie or forest ; but soon the railway 
shriek, a mile or two away, insists upon informing you 
of your whereabout ; or you recognize in the distance 
some landmark that you may have known, — an in* 



A LONDON SUBURB. 263 

sulated villa, perhaps, with its garden-wall around it, 
or the rudimental street of a new settlement which is 
sprouting on this otherwise barren soil. Half a cen- 
tury ago, the most frequent token of man's beneficent 
contiguity might have been a gibbet, and the creak, 
like a tavern sign, of a murderer swinging to and fro 
in irons. Blackheath, with its highwaymen and foot- 
pads, was dangerous in those days ; and even now, for 
aught I know, the Western prairie may still compare 
favorably with it as a safe region to go astray in. 
When I was acquainted with Blackheath, the ingen- 
ious device of garroting had recently come into fash- 
ion ; and I can remember, while crossing those waste 
places at midnight, and hearing footsteps behind me, 
to have been sensibly encouraged by also hearing, not 
far off, the clinking hoof-tramp of one of the horse- 
patrols who do regular duty there. About sunset, or 
a little later, was the ' time when the broad and some- 
what desolate peculiarity of the heath seemed to me 
to put on its utmost impressiveness. At that hour, 
finding myself on elevated ground, I once had a view 
of immense London, four or five miles off, with the 
vast Dome in the midst, and the towers of the two 
Houses of Parliament rising up into the smoky can- 
opy, the thinner substance of which obscured a mass 
of things, and hovered about the objects that were 
most distinctly visible, — a glorious and sombre pic- 
ture, dusky, awful, but irresistibly attractive, like a 
young man's dream of the great world, foretelling at 
that distance a grandeur never to be fully realized. 

While I lived in that neighborhood, the tents of 
two or three sets of cricket-players were constantly 
pitched on Blackheath, and matches were going for- 
ward that seemed to involve the honor and credit of 



264 A LONDON SUBURB. 

communities or counties, exciting an interest in every- 
body but myself, who cared not what part of England 
might glorify itself at the expense of another. It is 
necessary to be born an Englishman, I believe, in 
order to enjoy this great national game ; at any rate, 
as a spectacle for an outside observer, I found it lazy, 
lingering, tedious, and utterly devoid of pictorial ef- 
fects. Choice of other amusements was at hand. Butts 
for archery were established, and bows and arrows 
were to be let, at so many shots for a penny, — there 
being abundance of space for a farther flight-shot than 
any modern archer can lend to his shaft. Then there 
was an absurd game of throwing a stick at crockery- 
ware, which I have witnessed a hundred times, and 
personally engaged in once or twice, without ever hav- 
ing the satisfaction to see a bit of broken crockery. 
In other spots you found donkeys for children to ride, 
and ponies of a very meek and patient spirit, on which 
the Cockney pleasure-seekers of both sexes rode races 
and made wonderful displays of horsemanship. By 
way of refreshment there was gingerbread (but, as a 
true patriot, I must pronounce it greatly inferior to 
our native dainty), and ginger -beer, and probably 
stancher liquor among the booth - keeper's hidden 
stores. The frequent railway - trains, as well as the 
numerous steamers to Greenwich, have made the va- 
cant portions of Blackheath a play-ground and breath- 
ing-place for the Londoners, readily and very cheaply 
accessible ; so that, in view of this broader use and 
enjoyment, I a little grudged the tracts that have been 
filched away, so to speak, and individualized by thriv- 
ing citizens. One sort of visitors especially interested 
me : they were schools of little boys or girls, under the 
guardianship of their instructors, — charity schools, as 



A LONDON SUBURB. 265 

I often surmised from their aspect, collected among 
dark alleys and squalid courts ; and hither they were 
brought to spend a summer afternoon, these pale little 
progeny of the sunless nooks of London, who had 
never known that the sky was any broader than that 
narrow and vapory strip above their native lane. I 
fancied that they took but a doubtful pleasure, being 
half affrighted at the wide, empty space overhead and 
round about them, finding the air too little medicated 
with smoke, soot, and graveyard exhalations, to be 
breathed with comfort, and feeling shelterless and lost 
because grimy London, their slatternly and disreput- 
able mother, had suffered them to stray out of her 
arms. 

Passing among these holiday people, we come to one 
of the gateways of Greenwich Park, opening through 
an old brick wall. It admits us from the bare heath 
into a scene of antique cultivation and woodland orna- 
ment, traversed in all directions by avenues of trees, 
many of which bear tokens of a venerable age. These 
broad and well-kept pathways rise and decline over the 
elevations, and along the bases of gentle hills, which 
diversify the whole surface of the Park. The loftiest 
and most abrupt of them (though but of very mod- 
erate height) is one of the earth's noted summits, and 
may hold up its head with Mont Blanc and Chim- 
borazo, as being the site of Greenwich Observatory, 
where, if all nations will consent to say so, the longi- 
tude of our great globe begins. I used to regulate my 
watch by the broad dial-plate against the Observatory 
wall, and felt it pleasant to be standing at the very 
centre of Time and Space. 

There are lovelier parks than this in the neighbor- 
hood of London, richer scenes of greensward and cul- 



266 A LONDON SUBURB. 

tivated trees ; and Kensington, especially, in a sum- 
mer afternoon, has seemed to me as delightful as any 
place can or ought to be, in a world which, some time 
or other, we must quit. But Greenwich, too, is beau- 
tiful, — a spot where the art of man has conspired 
with Nature, as if he and the great mother had taken 
counsel together how to make a pleasant scene, and 
the longest liver of the two had faithfully carried out 
their mutual design. It has, likewise, an additional 
charm of its own, because, to all appearance, it is the 
people's property and play-ground in a much more 
genuine way than the aristocratic resorts in closer vi- 
cinity to the metropolis. It affords one of the in- 
stances in which the monarch's property is actually 
the people's, and shows how much more natural is 
their relation to the sovereign than ' to the nobility, 
which pretends to hold the intervening space between 
the two: for a nobleman makes a paradise only for 
himself, and fills it with his own pomp and pride ; 
whereas the people are sooner or later the legitimate 
inheritors of whatever beauty kings and queens create, 
as now of Greenwich Park. On Sundays, when the 
sun shone, and even on those grim and sombre days 
when, if it do not actually rain, the English persist in 
calling it fine weather, it was too good to see how stur- 
dily the plebeians trod under their own oaks, and what 
fulness of simple enjoyment they evidently found there. 
They were the people, — not the populace, — speci- 
mens of a class whose Sunday clothes are a distinct 
kind of garb from their week-day ones ; and this, in 
England, implies wholesome habits of life, daily thrift, 
and a rank above the lowest. I longed to be ac- 
quainted with them, in order to investigate what man- 
ner of folks they were, what sort of households they 



A LONDON SUBURB. 267 

kept, their politics, their religion, their tastes, and 
whether they were as narrow-minded as their betters. 
There can be very little doubt of it : an Englishman 
is English, in whatever rank of life, though no more 
intensely so, I should imagine, as an artisan or petty 
shopkeeper, than as a member of Parliament. 

The English character, as I conceive it, is by no 
means a very lofty one; they seem to have a great 
deal of earth and grimy dust clinging about them, as 
was probably the case with the stalwart and quarrel- 
some people who sprouted up out of the soil, after 
Cadmus had sown the dragon's teeth. And yet, though 
the individual Englishman is sometimes preternatu- 
rally disagreeable, an observer standing aloof has a 
sense of natural kindness towards them in the lump. 
They adhere closer to the original simplicity in which 
mankind was created than we ourselves do ; they love, 
quarrel, laugh, cry, and turn their actual selves inside 
out with greater freedom than any class of Americans 
would consider decorous. It was often so with these 
holiday folks in Greenwich Park ; and, ridiculous as 
it may sound, I fancy myself to have caught very sat- 
isfactory glimpses of Arcadian life among the Cock- 
neys there, hardly beyond the scope of Bow -Bells, 
picnicking in the grass, uncouthly gambolling on the 
broad slopes, or straying in motley groups or by sin- 
gle pairs of love-making youths and maidens, along 
the sun-streaked avenues. Even the omnipresent po- 
licemen or park-keepers could not disturb the beatific 
impression on my mind. One feature, at all events, 
of the Golden Age was to be seen in the herds of deer 
that encountered you in the somewhat remoter recesses 
of the Park, and were readily prevailed upon to nib- 
ble a bit of bread out of your hand. But, though no 



268 A LONDON SUBURB. 

wrong had ever been done them, and no horn had 
sounded nor hound bayed at the heels of themselves 
or their antlered progenitors for centuries past, there 
was still an apprehensiveness lingering in their hearts ; 
so that a slight movement of the hand or a step too 
near would send a whole squadron of them scamper- 
ing away, just as a breath scatters the winged seeds of 
a dandelion. 

The aspect of Greenwich Park, with all those fes- 
tal people wandering through it, resembled that of the 
Borghese Gardens under the walls of Rome, on a Sun- 
day or Saint's day ; but, I am not ashamed to say, it 
a little disturbed whatever grimly ghost of Puritanic 
strictness might be lingering in the sombre depths of 
a New England heart, among severe and sunless re- 
membrances of the Sabbaths of childhood, and pangs 
of remorse for ill-gotten lessons in the catechism, and 
for erratic fantasies or hardly suppressed laughter in 
the middle of long sermons. Occasionally, I tried to 
take the long-hoarded sting out of these compunctious 
smarts by attending divine service in the open air. 
On a cart outside of the Park-wall (and, if I mistake 
not, at two or three corners and secluded spots within 
the Park itself) a Methodist preacher uplifts his voice 
and speedily gathers a congregation, his zeal for whose 
religious welfare impels the good man to such earnest 
vociferation and toilsome gesture that his perspiring 
face is quickly in a stew. His inward flame conspires 
with the too fervid sun, and makes a positive martyr 
of him, even in the very exercise of his pious labor ; 
insomuch that he purchases every atom of spiritual 
increment to his hearers by loss of his own corporeal 
solidity, and, should his discourse last long enough, 
must finally exhale before their eyes. If I smile at 



A LONDON SUBURB. 269 

him, be it understood, it is not in scorn ; he performs 
his sacred office more acceptably than many a prelate. 
These wayside services attract numbers who would not 
otherwise listen to prayer, sermon, or hymn, from one 
year's end to another, and who, for that very reason, 
are the auditors most likely to be moved by the 
preacher's eloquence. Yonder Greenwich pensioner, 
too, — in his costume of three-cornered hat, and old- 
fashioned, brass-buttoned blue coat with ample skirts, 
which makes him look like a contemporary of Admi- 
ral Benbow, — that tough old mariner may hear a 
word or two which will go nearer his heart than any- 
thing that the chaplain of the Hospital can be ex- 
pected to deliver. I always noticed, moreover, that a 
considerable proportion of the audience were soldiers, 
who came hither with a day's leave from Woolwich, — 
hardy veterans in aspect, some of whom wore as many 
as four or five medals, Crimean or East Indian, on 
the breasts of their scarlet coats. The miscellaneous 
congregation listen with every appearance of heartfelt 
interest; and, for my own part, I must frankly ac- 
knowledge that I never found it possible to give five 
minutes' attention to any other English preaching: 
so cold and commonplace are the homilies that pass 
for such, under the aged roofs of churches. And as 
for cathedrals, the sermon is an exceedingly diminu- 
tive and unimportant part of the religious services, 
— if, indeed, it be considered a part, — among the 
pompous ceremonies, the intonations, and the resound- 
ing and lofty-voiced strains of the choristers. The 
magnificence of the setting quite dazzles out what we 
Puritans look upon as the jewel of the whole affair ; 
for I presume that it was our forefathers, the Dissen- 
ters in England and America, who gave the sermon 
its present prominence in the Sabbath exercises. 



270 A LONDON SUBURB. 

The Methodists are probably the first and only 
Englishmen who have worshipped in the open air 
since the ancient Britons listened to the preaching of 
the Druids ; and it reminded me of that old priest- 
hood, to see certain memorials of their dusky epoch 
— not religious, however, but warlike — in the neigh- 
borhood of the spot where the Methodist was holding 
forth. These were some ancient barrows, beneath or 
within which are supposed to lie buried the slain of a 
forgotten or doubtfully remembered battle, fought on 
the site of Greenwich Park as long ago as two or 
three centuries after the birth of Christ. Whatever 
may once have been their height and magnitude, they 
have now scarcely more prominence in the actual scene 
than the battle of which they are the sole monuments 
retains in history, — being only a few mounds side by 
side, elevated a little above the surface of the ground, 
ten or twelve feet in diameter, with a shallow depres- 
sion in their summits. When one of them was opened, 
not long since, no bones, nor armor, nor weapons were 
discovered, nothing but some small jewels, and a tuft 
of hair, — perhaps from the head of a valiant general, 
who, dying on the field of his victory, bequeathed this 
lock, together with his indestructible fame, to after 
ages. The hair and jewels are probably in the Brit- 
ish Museum, where the potsherds and rubbish of in- 
numerable generations make the visitor wish that each 
passing century could carry off all its fragments and 
relics along with it, instead of adding them to the con- 
tinually accumulating burden which human knowledge 
is compelled to lug upon its back. As for the fame, I 
know not what has become of it. 

After traversing the Park, we come into the neigh- 
borhood of Greenwich Hospital, and will pass through 



A LONDON SUBURB. 271 

one of its spacious gateways for the sake of glancing 
at an establishment which does more honor to the 
heart of England than anything else that I am ac- 
quainted with, of a public nature. It is very seldom 
that we can be sensible of anything like kindliness in 
the acts or relations of such an artificial thing as a 
National Government. Our own government, I should 
conceive, is too much an abstraction ever to feel any 
sympathy for its maimed sailors and soldiers, though 
it will doubtless do them a severe kind of justice, as 
chilling as the touch of steel. But it seemed to me 
that the Greenwich pensioners are the petted children 
of the nation, and that the government is their dry- 
nurse, and that the old men themselves have a child- 
like consciousness of their position. Very likely, a 
better sort of life might have been arranged, and a 
wiser care bestowed on them ; but, such as it is, it en- 
ables them to spend a sluggish, careless, comfortable 
old age, grumbling, growling, gruff, as if all the foul 
weather of their past years were pent up within them, 
yet not much more discontented than such weather- 
beaten and battle-battered fragments of human kind 
must inevitably be. Their home, in its outward form, 
is on a very magnificent plan. Its germ was a royal 
palace, the full expansion of which has resulted in a 
series of edifices externally more beautiful than any 
English palace that I have seen, consisting of several 
quadrangles of stately architecture, united by colon- 
nades and gravel-walks, and enclosing grassy squares, 
with statues in the centre, the whole extending along 
the Thames. It is built of marble, or very light-col- 
ored stone, in the classic style, with pillars and porti- 
cos, which (to my own taste, and, I fancy, to that of 
the old sailors) produce but a cold and shivery effect 



272 A LONDON SUBURB. 

in the English climate. Had I been the architect, I 
would have studied the characters, habits, and predi- 
lections of nautical people in Wapping, Eotherhithe, 
and the neighborhood of the Tower (places which I 
visited in affectionate remembrance of Captain Lem- 
uel Gulliver, and other actual or mythological naviga- 
tors), and would have built the hospital in a kind of 
ethereal similitude to the narrow, dark, ugly, and in- 
convenient, but snug and cosey homeliness of the 
sailor boarding-houses there. There can be no ques- 
tion that all the above attributes, or enough of them 
to satisfy an old sailor's heart, might be reconciled 
with architectural beauty and the wholesome contriv- 
ances of modern dwellings, and thus a novel and gen- 
uine «tyle of building be given to the world. 

But their countrymen meant kindly by the old fel- 
lows in assigning them the ancient royal site where 
Elizabeth held her court and Charles II. began to 
build his palace. So far as the locality went, it was 
treating them like so many kings ; and, with a discreet 
abundance of grog, beer, and tobacco, there was per- 
haps little more to be accomplished in behalf of men 
whose whole previous lives have tended to unfit them 
for old age. Their chief discomfort is probably for 
lack of something to do or think about. But, judging 
by the few whom I saw, a listless habit seems to have 
crept over them, a dim dreaminess of mood, in which 
they sit between asleep and awake> and find the long 
day wearing towards bedtime without its having made 
any distinct record of itself upon their consciousness. 
Sitting on stone benches in the sunshine, they subside 
into slumber, or nearly so, and start at the approach 
of footsteps echoing under the colonnades, ashamed to 
be caught napping, and rousing themselves in a hurry t 



A LONDON SUBURB. 273 

as formerly on the midnight watch at sea. In their 
brightest moments, they gather in groups and bore 
one another with endless sea - yarns about their voy- 
ages under famous admirals, and about gale and calm ? 
battle and chase, and all that class of incident that 
has its sphere on the deck and in the hollow interior 
of a ship, where their world has exclusively been. For 
other pastime, they quarrel among themselves, com- 
rade with comrade, and perhaps shake paralytic fists 
in furrowed faces. If inclined for a little exercise, 
they can bestir their wooden legs on the long espla- 
nade that borders by the Thames, criticising the rig of 
passing ships, and firing off volleys of malediction at 
the steamers, which have made the sea another element 
than that they used to be acquainted with. All this 
is but cold comfort for the evening of life, yet may 
compare rather favorably with the preceding portions 
of it, comprising little save imprisonment on ship- 
board, in the course of which they have been tossed 
all about the world and caught hardly a glimpse of it, 
forgetting what grass and trees are, and never finding 
out what woman is, though they may have encountered 
a painted spectre which they took for her. A country 
owes much to human beings whose bodies she has worn 
out and whose immortal part she has left undeveloped 
or debased, as we find them here ; and having wasted 
an idle paragraph upon them, let me now suggest that 
old men have a kind of susceptibility to moral impres- 
sions, and even (up to an advanced period) a recep- 
tivity of truth, which often appears to come to them 
after the active time of life is past. The Greenwich 
pensioners might prove better subjects for true educa- 
tion now than in their school-boy days ; but then where 

VOL. VII. 18 



274 A LONDON SUBURB. 

is the Normal School that could educate instructors for 
such a class ? 

There is a beautiful chapel for the pensioners, in the 
classic style, over the altar of which hangs a picture 
by West. I never could look at it long enough to 
make out its design ; for this artist (though it pains 
me to say it of so respectable a countryman) had a 
gift of frigidity, a knack of grinding ice into his paint, 
a power of stupefying the spectator's perceptions and 
quelling his sympathy, beyond any other limner that 
ever handled a brush. In spite of many pangs of con- 
science, I seize this opportunity to wreak a lifelong 
abhorrence upon the poor, blameless man, for the sake 
of that dreary picture of Lear, an explosion of frosty 
fury, that used to be a bugbear to me in the Athe- 
naeum Exhibition. Would fire burn it, I wonder ? 

The principal thing that they have to show you, 
at Greenwich Hospital, is the Painted Hall. It is a 
splendid and spacious room, at least a hundred feet 
long and half as high, with a ceiling painted in fresco 
by Sir James Thornhill. As a work of art, I presume, 
this frescoed canopy has little merit, though it pro- 
duces an exceedingly rich effect by its brilliant color- 
ing and as a specimen of magnificent upholstery. The 
walls of the grand apartment are entirely covered with 
pictures, many of them representing battles and other 
naval incidents that were once fresher in the world's 
memory than now, but chiefly portraits of old admirals, 
comprising the whole line of heroes who have trod the 
quarter-decks of British ships for more than two hun- 
dred years back. Next to a tomb in Westminster Ab- 
bey, which was Nelson's most elevated object of ambi- 
tion, it would seem to be the highest meed of a naval 
warrior to have his portrait hung up in the Painted 



A LONDON SUBURB. 275 

Hall ; but, by dint of victory upon victory, these illus- 
trious personages have grown to be a mob, and by no 
means a very interesting one, so far as regards the 
character of the faces here depicted. They are gen- 
erally commonplace, and often singularly stolid ; and 
I have observed (both in the Painted Hall and else- 
where, and not only in portraits, but in the actual pres- 
ence of such renowned people as I have caught glimpses 
of) that the countenances of heroes are not nearly so 
impressive as those of statesmen, — except, of course, 
in the rare instances where warlike ability has been but 
the one-sided manifestation of a profound genius for 
managing the world's affairs. Nine tenths of these 
distinguished admirals, for instance, if their faces tell 
truth, must needs have been blockheads, and might 
have served better, one would imagine, as wooden fig- 
ure-heads for their own ships than to direct any diffi- 
cult and intricate scheme of action from the quarter- 
deck. It is doubtful whether the same kind of men 
will hereafter meet with a similar degree of success ; 
for they were victorious chiefly through the old Eng- 
lish hardihood, exercised in a field of which modern 
science had not yet got possession. Rough valor has 
lost something of its value since their days, and must 
continue to sink lower and lower in the comparative 
estimate of warlike qualities. In the next naval war, 
as between England and France, I would bet, me- 
thinks, upon the Frenchman's head. 

It is remarkable, however, that the great naval hero 
of England — the greatest, therefore, in the world, and 
of all time — had none of the stolid characteristics 
that belong to his class, and cannot fairly be accepted 
as their representative man. Foremost in the rough- 
est of professions, he was as delicately organized as a 



276 A LONDON SUBURB. 

woman, and as painfully sensitive as a poet. More 
than any other Englishman he won the love and ad- 
miration of his country, but won them through the 
efficacy of qualities that are not English, or, at all 
events, were intensified in his case and made poignant 
and powerful by something morbid in the man, which 
put him otherwise at cross-purposes with life. He was 
a man of genius ; and genius in an Englishman (not 
to cite the good old simile of a pearl in the oyster) is 
usually a symptom of a lack of balance in the general 
making-up of the character ; as we may satisfy our- 
selves by running over the list of their poets, for ex- 
ample, and observing how many of them have been 
sickly or deformed, and how often their lives have 
been darkened by insanity. An ordinary Englishman 
is the healthiest and wholesomest of human beings ; an 
extraordinary one is almost always, in one way or an- 
other, a sick man. It was so with Lord Nelson. The 
wonderful contrast or relation between his personal 
qualities, the position which he held, and the life that 
he lived, makes him as interesting a personage as all 
history has to show ; and it is a pity that Southey's 
biography — so good in its superficial way, and yet so 
inadequate as regards any real delineation of the man 
. — should have taken the subject out of the hands of 
some writer endowed with more delicate appreciation 
and deeper insight than that genuine Englishman pos- 
sessed. But Southey accomplished his own purpose, 
which, apparently, was to present his hero as a pattern 
for England's young midshipmen. 

But the English capacity for hero-worship is full to 
the brim with what they are able to comprehend of 
Lord Nelson's character. Adjoining the Painted Hal] 
is a smaller room, the walls of which are completely 



A LONDON SUBURB. 277 

and exclusively adorned with pictures of the great Ad- 
miral's exploits. We see the frail, ardent man in all 
the most noted events of his career, from his encoun- 
ter with a Polar Bear to his death at Trafalgar, quiv- 
ering here and there about the room like a blue, lam- 
bent flame. No Briton ever enters that apartment with- 
out feeling the beef and ale of his composition stirred 
to its depths, and finding himself changed into a hero 
for the nonce, however stolid his brain, however tough 
his heart, however unexcitable his ordinary mood. To 
confess the truth, I myself, though belonging to an- 
other parish, have been deeply sensible to the sublime 
recollections there aroused, acknowledging that Nelson 
expressed his life in a kind of symbolic poetry which 
I had as much right to understand as these burly isl- 
anders. Cool and critical observer as I sought to be, 
I enjoyed their burst of honest indignation when a vis- 
itor (not an American, I am glad to say) thrust his 
walking-stick almost into Nelson's face, in one of the 
pictures, by way of pointing a remark ; and the by- 
standers immediately glowed like so many hot coals, 
and would probably have consumed the offender in 
their wrath, had he not effected his retreat. But the 
most sacred objects of all are two of Nelson's coats, 
under separate glass cases. One is that which he wore 
at the Battle of the -Nile, and it is now sadly injured 
by moths, which will quite destroy it in a few years, 
unless its guardians preserve it as we do Washington's 
military suit by occasionally baking it in an oven. 
The other is the coat in which he received his death- 
wound at Trafalgar. On its breast are sewed three or 
four stars and orders of knighthood, now much dimmed 
by time and damp, but which glittered brightly enough 
on the battle-day to draw the fatal aim of a French 



278 A LONDON SUBURB. 

marksman. The bullet-hole is visible on the shoulder, 
as well as a part of the golden tassels of an epaulet, 
the rest of which was shot away. Over the coat is 
laid a white waistcoat, with a great blood-stain on it, 
out of which all the redness has utterly faded, leav- 
ing it of a dingy yellow hue, in the threescore years 
since that blood gushed out. Yet it was once the red- 
dest blood in England, — Nelson's blood ! 

The hospital stands close adjacent to the town of 
Greenwich, which will always retain a kind of festal 
aspect in my memory, in consequence of my having 
first become acquainted with it on Easter Monday. 
Till a few years ago, the first three days of Easter 
were a carnival season in this old town, during which 
the idle and disreputable part of London poured itself 
into the streets like an inundation of the Thames, — 
as unclean as that turbid mixture of the offscourings 
of the vast city, and overflowing with its grimy pollu- 
tion whatever rural innocence, if any, might be found 
in the suburban neighborhood. This festivity was 
called Greenwich Fair, the final one of which, in an 
immemorial succession, it was my fortune to behold. 

If I had bethought myself of going through the fair 
with a note-book and pencil, jotting down all the 
prominent objects, I doubt not that the result might 
have been a sketch of English life quite as character- 
istic and worthy of historical preservation as an ac- 
count of the Roman Carnival. Having neglected to 
do so, I remember little more than a confusion of un- 
washed and shabbily dressed people, intermixed with 
some smarter figures, but, on the whole, presenting a 
mobbish appearance such as we never see in our own 
country. It taught me to understand why Shake- 
speare, in speaking of a crowd, so often alludes to its 



A LONDON SUBURB. 279 

attribute of evil odor. The common people of Eng- 
land, I am afraid, have no daily familiarity with even 
so necessary a thing as a wash-bowl, not to mention a 
bathing-tub. And, furthermore, it is one mighty dif- 
ference between them and us, that every man and 
woman on our side of the water has a working-day 
suit and a holiday suit, and is occasionally as fresh as 
a rose, whereas, in the good old country, the griminess 
of his labor or squalid habits clings forever to the in- 
dividual, and gets to be a part of his personal sub- 
stance. These are broad facts, involving great corol- 
laries and dependencies. There are really, if you stop 
to think about it, few sadder spectacles in the world 
than a ragged coat, or a soiled and shabby gown, at a 
festival. 

This unfragrant crowd was exceedingly dense, be- 
ing welded together, as it were, in the street through 
which we strove to make our way. On either side 
were oyster-stands, stalls of oranges (a very prevalent 
fruit in England, where they give the withered ones a 
guise of freshness by boiling them), and booths cov- 
ered with old sail-cloth, in which the commodity that 
most attracted the eye was gilt gingerbread. It was 
so completely enveloped in Dutch gilding that I did 
not at first recognize an old acquaintance, but won- 
dered what those golden crowns and images could be. 
There were likewise drums and other toys for small 
children, and a variety of showy and worthless articles 
for children of a larger growth ; though it perplexed 
me to imagine who, in such a mob, could have the in- 
nocent taste to desire playthings, or the money to pay 
for them. Not that I have a right to accuse the mob, 
on my own knowledge, of being any less innocent than 
a set of cleaner and better dressed people might have 



280 A LONDON SUBURB. 

been ; for, though one of them stole my pocket-hand- 
kerchief, I could not but consider it fair game, under 
the circumstances, and was grateful to the thief for 
sparing me my purse. They were quiet, civil, and re- 
markably good-humored, making due allowance for 
the national gruffness ; there was no riot, no tumul- 
tuous swaying to and fro of the mass, such as I have 
often noted in an American crowd ; no noise of voices, 
except frequent bursts of laughter, hoarse or shrill, 
and a widely diffused, inarticulate murmur, resembling 
nothing so much as the rumbling of the tide among 
the arches of London Bridge. What immensely per- 
plexed me was a sharp, angry sort of rattle, in all 
quarters, far off and close at hand, and sometimes 
right at my own back, where it sounded as if the stout 
fabric of my English surtout had been ruthlessly rent 
in twain; and everybody's clothes, all over the fair, 
were evidently being torn asunder in the same way. 
By and by, I discovered that this strange noise was 
produced by a little instrument called "The Fun of 
the Fair," — a sort of rattle, consisting of a wooden 
wheel, the cogs of which turn against a thin slip of 
wood, and so produce a rasping sound when drawn 
smartly against a person's back. The ladies draw 
their rattles against the backs of their male friends 
(and everybody passes for a friend at Greenwich 
Fair), and the young men return the compliment on 
the broad British backs of the ladies ; and all are 
bound by immemorial custom to take it in good part 
and be merry at the joke. As it was one of my pre- 
scribed official duties to give an account of such me- 
chanical contrivances as might be unknown in my own 
country, I have thought it right to be thus particulai 
in describing the Fun of the Fair. 



A LONDON SUBURB. 281 

But this was far from being: the sole amusement. 
There were theatrical booths, in front of which were 
pictorial representations of the scenes to be enacted 
within ; and anon a drummer emerged from one of 
them, thumping on a terribly lax drum, and followed 
by the entire dramatis personce, who ranged them- 
selves on a wooden platform in front of the theatre 
They were dressed in character, but wofully shabby, 
with very dingy and wrinkled white tights, threadbare 
cotton-velvets, crumpled silks, and crushed muslin, and 
all the gloss and glory gone out of their aspect and at- 
tire, seen thus in the broad daylight and after a long 
series of performances. They sang a song together, 
and withdrew into the theatre, whither the public were 
invited to follow them at the inconsiderable cost of a 
penny a ticket. Before another booth stood a pair of 
brawny fighting-men, displaying their muscle, and so- 
liciting patronage for an exhibition of the noble Brit- 
ish art of pugilism. There were pictures of giants, 
monsters, and outlandish beasts, most prodigious, to 
be sure, and worthy of all admiration, unless the artist 
had gone incomparably beyond his subject. Jugglers 
proclaimed aloud the miracles which they were pre- 
pared to work; and posture-makers dislocated every 
joint of their bodies and tied their limbs into inextri- 
cable knots, wherever they could find space to spread 
a little square of carpet on the ground. In the midst 
of the confusion, while everybody was treading on his 
neighbor's toes, some little boys were very solicitous 
to brush your boots. These lads, I believe, are a prod- 
uct of modern society, — at least, no older than the 
time of Gay, who celebrates their origin in his " Tri- 
via " ; but in most other respects the scene reminded 
me of Bunyan's description of Vanity Fair, — nor is 



282 A LONDON SUBURB. 

it at all improbable that the Pilgrim may have been a 
merry-maker here in his wild youth. 

It seemed very singular — though, of course, I im- 
mediately classified it as an English characteristic — 
to see a great many portable weighing-machines, the 
owners of which cried out continually and amain, 
" Come, know your weight ! Come, come, know your 
weight to-day ! Come, know your weight ! " and a 
multitude of people, mostly large in the girth, were 
moved by this vociferation to sit down in the ma- 
chines. I know not whether they valued themselves 
on their beef, and estimated their standing as mem- 
bers of society at so much a pound ; but I shall set it 
down as a national peculiarity, and a symbol of the 
prevalence of the earthly over the spiritual element, 
that Englishmen are wonderfully bent on knowing 
how solid and physically ponderous they are. 

On the whole, having an appetite for the brown 
bread and the tripe and sausages of life, as well as for 
its nicer cates and dainties, I enjoyed the scene, and 
was amused at the sight of a gruff old Greenwich pen- 
sioner, who, forgetful of the sailor-frolics of his young 
days, stood looking with grim disapproval at all these 
vanities. Thus we squeezed our way through the 
mob-jammed town, and emerged into the Park, where, 
likewise, we met a great many merry-makers, but with 
freer space for their gambols than in the streets. We 
soon found ourselves the targets for a cannonade with 
oranges (most of them in a decayed condition), which 
went humming past our ears from the vantage-ground 
of neighboring hillocks, sometimes hitting our sacred 
persons with an inelastic thump. This was one of the 
privileged freedoms of the time, and was nowise to be 
resented, except by returning the salute. Many per. 



A LONDON SUBURB. 283 

sons were running races, hand in hand, down the de- 
clivities, especially that steepest one on the summit of 
which stands the world-central Observatory, and (as 
in the race of life) the partners were usually male and 
female, and often caught a tumble together before 
reaching the bottom of the hill. Hereabouts we were 
pestered and haunted by two young girls, the eldest 
not more than thirteen, teasing us to buy matches ; 
and finding no market for their commodity, the taller 
one suddenly turned a somerset before our faces, and 
rolled heels over head from top to bottom of the hill 
on which we stood. Then, scrambling up the accliv- 
ity, the topsy-turvy trollop offered us her matches 
again, as demurely as if she had never flung aside her 
equilibrium ; so that, dreading a repetition of the feat, 
we gave her sixpence and an admonition, and enjoined 
her never to do so any more. 

The most curious amusement that we witnessed 
here — or anywhere else, indeed — was an ancient and 
hereditary pastime called " Kissing in the Ring." I 
shall describe the sport exactly as I saw it, although 
an English friend assures me that there are certain 
ceremonies with a handkerchief, which make it much 
more decorous and graceful. A handkerchief, indeed ! 
There was no such thing in the crowd, except it were 
the one which they had just filched out of my pocket. 
It is one of the simplest kinds of games, needing little 
or no practice to make the player altogether perfect; 
and the manner of it is this. A ring is formed (in 
the present case, it was of large circumference and 
thickly gemmed around with faces, mostly on the 
broad grin), into the centre of which steps an adven- 
turous youth, and, looking round the circle, selects 
whatever maiden may most delight his eye. He pre- 



284 A LONDON SUBURB. 

sents his hand (which she is bound to accept), leads 
her into the centre, salutes her on the lips, and retires, 
taking his stand in the expectant circle. The girl, in 
her turn, throws a favorable regard on some fortunate 
young man, offers her hand to lead him forth, makes 
him happy with a maidenly kiss, and withdraws to 
hide her blushes, if any there be, among the simpering 
faces in the ring ; while the favored swain loses no 
time in transferring her salute to the prettiest and 
plumpest among the many mouths that are primming 
themselves in anticipation. And thus the thing goes 
on, till all the festive throng are inwreathed and in- 
tertwined into an endless and inextricable chain of 
kisses ; though, indeed, it smote me with compassion 
to reflect that some forlorn pair of lips might be left 
out, and never know the triumph of a salute, after 
throwing aside so many delicate reserves for the sake 
of winning it. If the young men had any chivalry, 
there was a fair chance to display it by kissing the 
homeliest damsel in the circle. 

To be frank, however, at the first glance, and to my 
American eye, they looked all homely alike, and the 
chivalry that I suggest is more than I could have been 
capable of, at any period of my life. They seemed to 
be country - lasses, of sturdy and wholesome aspect, 
with coarse-grained, cabbage-rosy cheeks, and, I am 
willing to suppose, a stout texture of moral principle, 
such as would bear a good deal of rough usage without 
suffering much detriment. But how unlike the trim 
little damsels of my native land ! I desire above all 
things to be courteous ; but, since the plain truth must 
be told, the soil and climate of England produce fem- 
inine beauty as rarely as they do delicate fruit ; and 
though admirable specimens of both are to be met 



A LONDON SUBURB. 285 

with, they are the hot-house ameliorations of refined 
society, and apt, moreover, to relapse into the coarse- 
ness of the original stock. The men are manlike, but 
the women are not beautiful, though the female Bull 
be well enough adapted to the male. To return to the 
lasses of Greenwich Fair, their charms were few, and 
their behavior, perhaps, not altogether commendable ; 
and yet it was impossible not to feel a degree of faith 
in their innocent intentions, with such a half-bashful 
zest and entire simplicity did they keep up their part 
of the game. It put the spectator in good-humor to 
look at them, because there was still something of the 
old Arcadian life, the secure freedom of the antique 
age, in their way of surrendering their lips to stran- 
gers, as if there were no evil or impurity in the world. 
As for the young men, they were chiefly specimens of 
the vulgar sediment of London life, often shabbily gen- 
teel, rowdyish, pale, wearing the unbrushed coat, un- 
shifted linen, and unwashed faces of yesterday, as well 
as the haggardness of last night's jollity in a gin-shop. 
Gathering their character from these tokens, I won- 
dered whether there were any reasonable prospect of 
their fair partners returning to their rustic homes with 
as much innocence (whatever were its amount or qual- 
ity) as they brought to Greenwich Fair, in spite of 
the perilous familiarity established by Kissing in the 
Ring. 

The manifold disorders resulting from the fair, at 
which a vast city was brought into intimate relations 
with a comparatively rural district, have at length led 
to its suppression ; this was the very last celebration 
of it, and brought to a close the broad-mouthed merri- 
ment of many hundred years. Thus my poor sketch, 
faint as its colors are, may acquire some little value in 



286 A LONDON SUBURB. 

the reader's eyes from the consideration that no obser- 
ver of the coming time will ever have an opportunity 
to give a better. I should find it difficult to believe, 
however, that the queer pastime just described, or any 
moral mischief to which that and other customs might 
pave the way, can have led to the overthrow of Green- 
wich Fair ; for it has often seemed to me that Eng- 
lishmen of station and respectability, unless of a pe- 
culiarly philanthropic turn, have neither any faith in 
the feminine purity of the lower orders of their coun- 
trywomen, nor the slightest value for it, allowing its 
possible existence. The distinction of ranks is so 
marked, that the English cottage damsel holds a posi- 
tion somewhat analogous to that of the negro girl in 
our Southern States. Hence comes inevitable .detri- 
ment to the moral condition of those men themselves, 
who forget that the humblest woman has a right and 
a duty to hold herself in the same sanctity as the high- 
est. The subject cannot well be discussed in these 
pages ; but I offer it as a serious conviction, from what 
I have been able to observe, that the England of to- 
day is the unscrupulous old England of Tom Jones 
and Joseph Andrews, Humphrey Clinker and Roder- 
ick Random ; and in our refined era, just the same as 
at that more free-spoken epoch, this singular people 
has a certain contempt for any fine-strained purity, 
any special squeamishness, as they consider it, on the 
part of an ingenuous youth. They appear to look 
upon it as a suspicious phenomenon in the masculine 
character. 

Nevertheless, I by no means take upon me to affirm 
that English morality, as regards the phase here al- 
luded to, is really at a lower point than our own. As- 
suredly, I hope so, because, making a higher preten- 



.4 LONDON SUBURB. 287 

sion, or, at all events, more carefully hiding whatever 
may be amiss, we are either better than they, or neces- 
sarily a great deal worse. It impressed me that their 
open avowal and recognition of immoralities served 
to throw the disease to the surface, where it might be 
more effectually dealt with, and leave a sacred interior 
not utterly profaned, instead of turning its poison back 
among the inner vitalities of the character, at the im- 
minent risk of corrupting them all. Be that as it 
may, these Englishmen are certainly a franker and* 
simpler people than ourselves, from peer to peasant ; 
but if we can take it as compensatory on our part 
(which I leave to be considered) that they owe those 
noble and manly qualities to a coarser grain in their 
nature, and that, with a finer one in ours, we shall ul- 
timately acquire a marble polish of which they are un 
susceptible, 1 believe that this may be the truth. 



UP THE THAMES. 

The upper portion of Greenwich (where my last 
article left me loitering) is a cheerful, comely, old- 
fashioned town, the peculiarities of which, if there be 
any, have passed out of my remembrance. As you 
descend towards the Thames the streets get meaner, 
and the shabby and sunken houses, elbowing one an- 
other for frontage, bear the sign-boards of beer-shops 
and eating-rooms, with especial promises of white-bait 
and other delicacies in the fishing line. You observe, 
also, a frequent announcement of " Tea Gardens " in 
the rear ; although, estimating the capacity of the 
premises by their external compass, the entire sylvan 
charm and shadowy seclusion of such blissful resorts 
must be limited within a small back-yard. These 
places of cheap sustenance and recreation depend for 
support upon the innumerable pleasure-parties who 
come from London Bridge by steamer, at a fare of a 
few pence, and who get as enjoyable a meal for a shil- 
ling a head as the Ship Hotel would afford a gentle- 
man for a guinea. 

The steamers, which are constantly smoking their 
pipes up and down the Thames, offer much the most 
agreeable mode of getting to London. At least, it 
might be exceedingly agreeable, except for the myriad 
floating particles of soot from the stove-pipe, and the 
heavy heat of midsummer sunshine on the unsheltered 
deck, or the chill, misty air-draught of a cloudy day, 
and the spiteful little showers of rain that may spatter 



UP THE THAMES. 289 

down upon you at any moment, whatever the promise 
of the sky ; besides which there is some slight incon- 
venience from the inexhaustible throng of passengers, 
who scarcely allow you standing-room, nor so much as 
a breath of unappropriated air, and never a chance to 
sit down. If these difficulties, added to the possibility 
of getting your pocket picked, weigh little with you, 
the panorama along the shores of the memorable river, 
and the incidents and shows of passing life upon its 
bosom, render the trip far preferable to the brief yet 
tiresome shoot along the railway track. On one such 
voyage, a regatta of wherries raced past us, and at 
once involved every soul on board our steamer in the 
tremendous excitement of the struggle. The spectacle 
was but a moment within our view, and presented 
nothing more than a few light skiffs, in each of which 
sat a single rower, bare-armed, and with little apparel, 
save a shirt and drawers, pale, anxious, with every 
muscle on the stretch, and plying his oars in such 
fashion that the boat skimmed along with the aerial 
celerity of a swallow. I wondered at myself for so 
immediately catching an interest in the affair, which 
seemed to contain no very exalted rivalship of man- 
hood ; but, whatever the kind of battle or the prize 
of victory, it stirs one's sympathy immensely, and is 
even awful, to behold the rare sight of a man thor- 
oughly in earnest, doing his best, putting forth all 
there is in him, and staking his very soul (as these 
rowers appeared willing to do) on the issue of the 
contest. It was the seventy-fourth annual regatta of 
the Free Watermen of Greenwich, and announced it- 
self as under the patronage of the Lord Mayor and 
other distinguished individuals, at whose expense, I 
suppose, a prize -boat was offered to the conqueror, 

VOL. VII. 19 



290 UP THE THAMES. 

and some small amounts of money to the inferior com- 
petitors. 

The aspect of London along the Thames, below 
Bridge, as it is called, is by no means so impressive as 
it ought to be, considering what peculiar advantages 
are offered for the display of grand and stately archi- 
tecture by the passage of a river through the midst of 
a great city. It seems, indeed, as if the heart of Lon- 
don had been cleft open for the mere purpose of show- 
ing how rotten and drearily mean it had become. The 
shore is lined with the shabbiest, blackest, and ugliest 
buildings that can be imagined, decayed warehouses 
with blind windows, and wharves that look ruinous ; 
insomuch that, had I known nothing more of the 
world's metropolis, I might have fancied that it had 
already experienced the downfall which I have heard 
commercial and financial prophets predict for it, within 
the century. And the muddy tide of the Thames, re- 
flecting nothing, and hiding a million of unclean se- 
crets within its breast, — ■ a sort of guilty conscience, as 
it were, unwholesome with the rivulets of sin that con- 
stantly flow into it, — is just the dismal stream to glide 
by such a city. The surface, to be sure, displays no 
lack of activity, being fretted by the passage of a hun- 
dred steamers and covered with a good deal of ship- 
ping, but mostly of a clumsier build than I had been 
accustomed to see in the Mersey : a fact which I com- 
placently attributed to the smaller number of Ameri- 
can clippers in the Thames, and the less prevalent in- 
fluence of American example in refining away the 
broad-bottomed capacity of the old Dutch or English 
models. 

About midway between Greenwich and London 
Bridge, at a rude landing-place on the left bank of 



UP THE THAMES. 291 

the river, the steamer rings its bell and makes a mo- 
mentary pause in front of a large circular structure, 
where it may be worth our while to scramble ashore. 
It indicates the locality of one of those prodigious 
practical blunders that would supply John Bull with 
a topic of inexhaustible ridicule, if his cousin Jona- 
than had committed them, but of which he himself 
perpetrates ten to our one in the mere wantonness of 
wealth that lacks better employment. The circular 
building covers the entrance to the Thames Tunnel, 
and is surmounted by a dome of glass, so as to throw 
daylight down into the great depth at which the pas- 
sage of the river commences. Descending a wearisome 
succession of staircases, we at last find ourselves, still 
in the broad noon, standing before a closed door, on 
opening which we behold the vista of an arched corri- 
dor that extends into everlasting midnight. In these 
days, when glass has been applied to so many new 
purposes,, it is a pity that the architect had not thought 
of arching portions of his abortive tunnel with im- 
mense blocks of the lucid substance, over which the 
dusky Thames would have flowed like a cloud, making 
the sub -fluvial avenue only a little gloomier than a 
street of upper London. At present, it is illuminated 
at regular intervals by jets of gas, not very brilliantly, 
yet with lustre enough to show the damp plaster of 
the ceiling and walls, and the massive stone pavement, 
the crevices of which are oozy with moisture, not from 
the incumbent river, but from hidden springs in the 
earth's deeper heart. There are two parallel corridors, 
with a wall between, for the separate accommodation 
of the double throng of foot-passengers, equestrians, 
and vehicles of all kinds, which was expected to roll 
and reverberate continually through the Tunnel. Only 



292 UP THE THAMES. 

one of them has ever been opened, and its echoes are 
but feebly awakened by infrequent footfalls. 

Yet there seem to be people who spend their lives 
here, and who probably blink like owls, when, once or 
twice a year, perhaps, they happen to climb into the 
sunshine. All along the corridor, which I believe to 
be a mile in extent, we see stalls or shops in little 
alcoves, kept principally by women ; they were of a 
ripe age, I was glad to observe, and certainly robbed 
England of none of its very moderate supply of femi- 
nine loveliness by their deeper than tomb-like inter- 
ment. As you approach (and they are so accustomed 
to the dusky gaslight that they read all your charac- 
teristics afar off), they assail you with hungry entrea- 
ties to buy some of their merchandise, holding forth 
views of the Tunnel put up in cases of Derbyshire 
spar, with a magnifying-glass at one end to make the 
vista more effective. They offer you, besides, cheap 
jewelry, sunny topazes and resplendent emeralds for 
sixpence, and diamonds as big as the Koh-i-noor at 
a not much heavier cost, together with a multifarious 
trumpery which has died out of the upper world to re- 
appear in this Tartarean bazaar. That you may fancy 
yourself still in the realms of the living, they urge you 
to partake of cakes, candy, ginger-beer, and such small 
refreshment, more suitable, however, for the shadowy 
appetite of ghosts than for the sturdy stomachs of 
Englishmen. The most capacious of the shops con- 
tains a dioramic exhibition of cities and scenes in the 
daylight world, with a dreary glimmer of gas among 
them all ; so that they serve well enough to represent 
the dim, unsatisfactory remembrances that dead people 
might be supposed to retain from their past lives, mix- 
ing them up with the ghastliness of their unsubstantial 



UP THE THAMES. 293 

state. I dwell the more upon these trifles, and do my 
best to give them a mockery of importance, because, if 
these are nothing, then all this elaborate contrivance 
and mighty piece of work has been wrought in vain. 
The Englishman has burrowed under the bed of his 
great river, and set ships of two or three thousand 
tons a-rolling over his head, only to provide new sites 
for a few old women to sell cakes and ginger-beer ! 

Yet the conception was a grand one ; and though it 
has proved an absolute failure, swallowing an immen- 
sity of toil and money, with auual returns hardly suf- 
ficient to keep the pavement free from the ooze of 
subterranean springs, yet it needs, I presume only 
an expenditure three or four (or, for aught I know, 
twenty) times as large, to make the enterprise brill- 
iantly successful. The descent is so great from the 
bank of the river to its surface, and the Tunnel dips 
so profoundly under the river's bed, that the ap- 
proaches on either side must commence a long way 
off, in order to render the entrance accessible to horse- 
men or vehicles ; so that the larger part of the cost of 
the whole affair should have been expended on its 
margins. It has turned out a sublime piece of folly ; 
and when the New - Zealander of distant ages shall 
have moralized sufficiently among the ruins of London 
Bridge, he will bethink himself that somewhere there- 
about was the marvellous Tunnel, the very existence 
of which will seem to him as incredible as that of the 
hanging gardens of Babylon. But the Thames will 
long ago have broken through the massive arch, and 
choked up the corridors with mud and sand and with 
the large stones of the structure itself, intermixed with 
skeletons of drowned people, the rusty ironwork of 
sunken vessels, and the great many such precious and 



294 UP THE THAMES. 

curious things as a river always contrives to hide in 
its bosom ; the entrance will have been obliterated, 
and its very site forgotten beyond the memory of 
twenty generations of men, and the whole neighbor- 
hood be held a dangerous spot on account of the mala- 
ria ; insomuch that the traveller will make but a brief 
and careless inquisition for the traces of the old won- 
der, and will stake his credit before the public, in 
some Pacific Monthly of that day, that the story of it 
is but a myth, though enriched with a spiritual pro- 
fundity which he will proceed to unfold. 

Yet it is impossible (for a Yankee, at least) to see 
so much magnificent ingenuity thrown away, without 
trying to endow the unfortunate result with some kind 
of usefulness, though perhaps widely different from 
the purpose of its original conception. In former ages, 
the mile-long corridors, with their numerous alcoves, 
might have been utilized as a series of dungeons, the 
fittest of all possible receptacles for prisoners of state. 
Dethroned monarchs and fallen statesmen would not 
have needed to remonstrate against a domicile so spa- 
cious, so deeply secluded from the world's scorn, and 
so admirably in accordance with their thenceforward 
sunless fortunes. An alcove here might have suited 
Sir Walter Raleigh better than that darksome hiding- 
place communicating with the great chamber in the 
Tower, pacing from end to end of which he meditated 
upon his " History of the World." His track would 
here have been straight and narrow, indeed, and would 
therefore have lacked somewhat of the freedom that 
his intellect demanded ; and yet the length to which 
his footsteps might have travelled forth and retraced 
themselves would partly have harmonized his physical 
movement with the grand curves and planetary return? 



UP THE THAMES. 295 

of his thought, through cycles of majestic periods. 
Having it in his mind to compose the world's history, 
methinks he could have asked no better retirement 
than such a cloister as this, insulated from all the 
seductions of mankind and womankind, deep beneath 
their mysteries and motives, down into the heart of 
things, full of personal reminiscences in order to the 
comprehensive measurement and verification of his- 
toric records, seeing into the secrets of human nature, 

— secrets that daylight never yet revealed to mortal, 

— but detecting their whole scope and purport with 
the infallible eyes of unbroken solitude and night. 
And then the shades of the old mighty men might 
have risen from their still profounder abodes and 
joined him in the dim corridor, treading beside him 
with an antique stateliness of mien, telling him in 
melancholy tones, grand, but always melancholy, of 
the greater ideas and purposes which their most re- 
nowned performances so imperfectly carried out, that, 
magnificent successes in the view of all posterity, they 
were but failures to those who planned them. As 
Raleigh was a navigator, Noah would have explained 
to him the peculiarities of construction that made the 
ark so seaworthy ; as Raleigh was a statesman, Moses 
would have discussed with him the principles of laws 
and government ; as Raleigh was a soldier, Csesar and 
Hannibal would have held debate in his presence, with 
this martial student for their umpire ; as Raleigh was 
a poet, David, or whatever most illustrious bard he 
might call up, would have touched his harp, and made 
manifest all the true significance of the past by means 
of song and the subtle intelligences of music. 

Meanwhile, I had forgotten that Sir Walter Ra- 
leigh's century knew nothing of gaslight, and that it 



296 UP THE THAMES, 

would require a prodigious and wasteful expenditure 
of tallow-candles to illuminate the Tunnel sufficiently 
to discern even a ghost. On this account, however, it 
would be all the more suitable place of confinement 
for a metaphysician, to keep him from bewildering 
mankind with his shadowy speculations ; and, being 
shut off from external converse, the dark corridor 
would help him to make rich discoveries in those cav- 
ernous regions and mysterious by-paths of the intel- 
lect, which he had so long accustomed himself to ex- 
plore. But how would every successive age rejoice in 
so secure a habitation for its reformers, and especially 
for each best and wisest man that happened to be then 
alive ! He seeks to burn up our whole system of so- 
ciety, under pretence of purifying it from its abuses ! 
Away with him into the Tunnel, and let him begin by 
setting the Thames on fire, if he is able ! 

If not precisely these, yet akin to these were some 
of the fantasies that haunted me as I passed under the 
river : for the place is suggestive of such idle and irre- 
sponsible stuff by its own abortive character, its lack 
of whereabout on upper earth, or any solid foundation 
of realities. Could I have looked forward a few years, 
I might have regretted that American enterprise had 
not provided a similar tunnel, under the Hudson or 
the Potomac, for the convenience of our National Gov- 
ernment in times hardly yet gone by. It would be 
delightful to clap up all the enemies of our peace and 
Union in the dark together, and there let them abide, 
listening to the monotonous roll of the river above 
their heads, or perhaps in a state of miraculously sus- 
pended animation, until, — be it after months, years, 
or centuries, — when the turmoil shall be all over, the 
Wrong washed away in blood (since that must needs 



UP THE THAMES. 297 

be the cleansing fluid), and the Right firmly rooted 
in the soil which that blood will have enriched, they 
might crawl forth again and catch a single glimpse at 
their redeemed country, and feel it to be a better land 
than they deserve, and die ! 

I was not sorry when the daylight reached me after 
a much briefer abode in the nether regions than, I 
fear, would await the troublesome personages just 
hinted at. Emerging on the Surrey side of the 
Thames, I found myself in Kotherhithe, a neighbor- 
hood not unfamiliar to the readers of old books of 
maritime adventure. There being a ferry hard by 
the mouth of the Tunnel, I recrossed the river in the 
primitive fashion of an open boat, which the conflict 
of wind and tide, together with the swash and swell 
of the passing steamers, tossed high and low rather 
tumultuously. This inquietude of our frail skiff 
(which, indeed, bobbed up and down like a cork) so 
much alarmed an old lady, the only other passenger, 
that the boatmen essayed to comfort her. " Never 
fear, mother ! " grumbled one of them, " we '11 make 
the riyer as smooth as we can for you. We '11 get a 
plane, and plane down the waves ! " The joke may 
not read very brilliantly ; but I make bold to record 
it as the only specimen that reached my ears of the 
old, rough water -wit for which the Thames used to 
be so celebrated. Passing directly along the line of 
the sunken Tunnel, we landed in Wappmg, which I 
should have presupposed to be the most tarry and 
pitchy spot on earth, swarming with old salts, and 
full of warm, bustling, coarse, homely, and cheerful 
life. Nevertheless, it turned out to be a cold and tor- 
pid neighborhood, mean, shabby, and unpicturesque, 
both as to its buildings and inhabitants : the latter 



298 UP THE THAMES. 

comprising (so far as was visible to me) not a single 
unmistakable sailor, though plenty of land - sharks, 
who get a half-dishonest livelihood by business con- 
nected with the sea. Ale and spirit vaults (as petty 
drinking -establishments are styled in England, pre- 
tending to contain vast cellars full of liquor within 
the compass of ten feet square above ground) were 
particularly abundant, together with apples, oranges, 
and oysters, the stalls of fishmongers and butchers, 
and slop-shops, where blue jackets and duck trousers 
swung and capered before the doors. Everything 
was on the poorest scale, and the place bore an aspect 
of unredeemable decay. From this remote point of 
London, I strolled leisurely towards the heart of the 
city ; while the streets, at first but thinly occupied by 
man or vehicle, got more and more thronged with 
foot-passengers, carts, drays, cabs, and the all -per- 
vading and all-accommodating omnibus. But I lack 
courage, and feel that I should lack perseverance, as 
the gentlest reader would lack patience, to undertake 
a descriptive stroll through London streets ; more es- 
pecially as there would be a volume ready for the 
printer before we could reach a midway resting-place 
at Charing Cross. It will be the easier course to step 
aboard another passing steamer, and continue our trip 
up the Thames. 

The next notable group of objects is an assemblage 
of ancient walls, battlements, and turrets, out of the 
midst of which rises prominently one great square 
tower, of a grayish hue, bordered with white stone, 
and having a small turret at each corner of the roof. 
This central structure is the White Tower, and the 
whole circuit of ramparts and enclosed edifices consti- 
tutes what is known in English history, and still more 



UP THE THAMES. 299 

widely and impressively in English poetry, as the 
Tower. A crowd of river-craft are generally moored 
in front of it ; but if we look sharply at the right mo- 
ment under the base of the rampart, we may catch a 
glimpse of an arched water-entrance, half submerged, 
past which the Thames glides as indifferently as if it 
were the mouth of a city-kenneL Nevertheless, it is 
the Traitor's Gate, a dreary kind of triumphal pas- 
sageway (now supposed to be shut up and barred for- 
ever), through which a multitude of noble and illus- 
trious personages have entered the Tower and found 
it a brief resting-place on their way to heaven. Pass- 
ing it many times, I never observed that anybody 
glanced at this shadowy and ominous trap-door, save 
myself. It is well that America exists, if it were only 
that her vagrant children may be impressed and af- 
fected by the historical monuments of England in a 
degree of which the native inhabitants are evidently 
incapable. These matters are too familiar, too real, 
and too hopelessly built in amongst and mixed up with 
the common objects and affairs of life, to be easily 
susceptible of imaginative coloring in their minds; 
and even their poets and romancers feel it a toil, and 
almost a delusion, to extract poetic material out of 
what seems embodied poetry itself to an American, 
An Englishman cares nothing about the Tower, which 
to us is a haunted castle in dreamland. That honest 
and excellent gentleman, the late Mr. G. P. R. James 
(whose mechanical ability, one might have supposed, 
would nourish itself by devouring every old stone of 
such a structure), once assured me that he had never 
in his life set eyes upon the Tower, though for years 
an historic novelist in London. 

Not to spend a whole summer's day upon the voy- 



300 UP THE THAMES. 

age, we will suppose ourselves to have reached London 
Bridge, and thence to have taken another steamer for a 
farther passage up the river. But here the memorable 
objects succeed each other so rapidly that I can spare 
but a single sentence even for the great Dome, though 
I deem it more picturesque, in that dusky atmosphere, 
than St. Peter's in its clear blue sky. I must mention, 
however (since everything connected with royalty is 
especially interesting to my dear countrymen), that I 
once saw a large and beautiful barge, splendidly gilded 
and ornamented, and overspread with a rich covering, 
lying at the pier nearest to St. Paul's Cathedral; it 
had the royal banner of Great Britain displayed, be- 
sides being decorated with a number of other flags ; 
and many footmen (who are universally the grandest 
and gaudiest objects to be seen in England at this day, 
and these were regal ones, in a bright scarlet livery be- 
dizened with gold-lace, and white silk stockings) were 
in attendance. I know not what festive or ceremonial 
occasion may have drawn out this pageant ; after all, 
it might have been merely a city-spectacle, appertain- 
ing to the Lord Mayor ; but the sight had its value in 
bringing vividly before me the grand old times when 
the sovereign and nobles were accustomed to use the 
Thames as the high street of the metropolis, and join 
in pompous processions upon it ; whereas, the desue- 
tude of such customs, nowadays, has caused the whole 
show of river-life to consist in a multitude of smoke- 
begrimed steamers. An analogous change has taken 
place in the streets, where cabs and the omnibus have 
crowded out a rich variety of vehicles ; and thus life 
gets more monotonous in hue from age to age, and 
appears to seize every opportunity to strip off a bit of 
its gold-lace among the wealthier classes, and to make 
itself decent in the lower ones. 



UP THE THAMES, 301 

Yonder is Whitefriars, the old rowdy Alsatia, now 
wearing as decorous a face as any other portion of 
London ; and, adjoining it, the avenues and brick 
squares of the Temple, with that historic garden, close 
upon the river-side, and still rich in shrubbery and 
flowers, where the partisans of York and Lancaster 
plucked the fatal roses, and scattered their pale and 
bloody petals over so many English battle-fields. 
Hard by, we see the long white front or rear of Som- 
erset House, and, farther on, rise the two new Houses 
of Parliament, with a huge unfinished tower already 
hiding its imperfect summit in the smoky canopy, — 
the whole vast and cumbrous edifice a specimen of the 
best that modern architecture can effect, elaborately 
imitating the masterpieces of those simple ages when 
men " builded better than they knew." Close by it, 
we have a glimpse of the roof and upper towers of the 
holy Abbey ; while that gray, ancestral pile on the op- 
posite side of the river is Lambeth Palace, a venerable 
group of halls and turrets, chiefly built of brick, but 
with at least one large tower of stone. In our course, 
we have passed beneath half a dozen bridges, and, 
emerging out of the black heart of London, shall soon 
reach a cleanly suburb, where old Father Thames, if I 
remember, begins to put on an aspect of unpolluted in- 
nocence. And now we look back upon the mass of in- 
numerable roofs, out of which rise steeples, towers, 
columns, and the great crowning Dome, — look back, 
in short, upon that mystery of the world's proudest 
city, amid which a man so longs and loves to be ; not, 
perhaps, because it contains much that is positively ad- 
mirable and enjoyable, but because, at all events, the 
world has nothing better. The cream of external life 
\s there ; and whatever merely intellectual or material 



302 UP THE THAMES. 

good we fail to find perfect in London, we may as well 
content ourselves to seek that unattainable thing no 
farther on this earth. 

The steamer terminates its trip at Chelsea, an old 
town endowed with a prodigious number of pothouses, 
and some famous gardens, called the Cremorne, for 
public amusement. The most noticeable thing, how- 
ever, is Chelsea Hospital, which, like that of Green- 
wich, was founded, I believe, by Charles II. (whose 
bronze statue, in the guise of an old Roman, stands in 
the centre of the quadrangle), and appropriated as a 
home for aged and infirm soldiers of the British army. 
The edifices are of three stories, with windows in the 
high roofs, and are built of dark, sombre brick, with 
stone edgings and facings. The effect is by no means 
that of grandeur (which is somewhat disagreeably an 
attribute of Greenwich Hospital), but a quiet and 
venerable neatness. At each extremity of the street- 
front there is a spacious and hospitably open gateway, 
lounging about which I saw some gray veterans in 
long scarlet coats of an antique fashion, and the cocked 
hats of a century ago, or occasionally a modern forag- 
ing-cap. Almost all of them moved with a rheumatic 
gait, two or three stumped on wooden legs, and here 
and there an arm was missing. Inquiring of one of 
these fragmentary heroes whether a stranger could be 
admitted to see the establishment, he replied most cor- 
dially, " Oh yes, sir, — anywhere ! Walk in and go 
where you please, — up stairs, or anywhere ! " So I 
entered, and, passing along the inner side of the quad- 
rangle, came to the door of the chapel, which forms a 
part of the contiguity of edifices next the street. Here 
another pensioner, an old warrior of exceedingly peace- 
able and Christian demeanor, touched his three-cor- 



UP THE THAMES. 303 

nered hat and asked if I wished to see the interior ; 
to which I assenting, he unlocked the door, and we 
went in. 

The chapel consists of a great hall with a vaulted 
roof, and over the altar is a large painting in fresco, 
the subject of which I did not trouble myself to make 
out. More appropriate adornments of the place, dedi- 
cated as well to martial reminiscences as religious wor- 
ship, are the long ranges of dusty and tattered ban- 
ners, that hang from their staves all round the ceiling 
of the chapel. They are trophies of battles fought and 
won in every quarter of the world, comprising the cap- 
tured flags of all the nations with whom the British 
lion has waged war since James II. 's time, — French, 
Dutch, East Indian, Prussian, Russian, Chinese, and 
American, — collected together in this consecrated 
spot, not to symbolize that there shall be no more dis- 
cord upon earth, but drooping over the aisle in sullen, 
though peaceable humiliation. Yes, I said "Ameri- 
can " among the rest ; for the good old pensioner mis- 
took me for an Englishman, and failed not to point 
out (and, methought, with an especial emphasis of tri- 
umph) some flags that had been taken at Bladensburg 
and Washington. I fancied, indeed, that they hung 
a little higher and drooped a little lower than any of 
their companions in disgrace. It is a comfort, how 
ever, that their proud devices are already indistinguish- 
able, or nearly so, owing to dust and tatters and the 
kind offices of the moths, and that they will soon rot 
from the banner-staves and be swept out in unrecog- 
nized fragments from .the chapel-door. 

It is a good method of teaching a man how imper- 
fectly cosmopolitan he is, to show him his country's 
flag occupying a position of dishonor in a foreign 



304 UP THE THAMES. 

land. But, in truth, the whole system of a people 
crowing over its military triumphs had far better be 
dispensed with, both on account of the ill-blood that it 
helps to keep fermenting among the nations, and be- 
cause it operates as an accumulative inducement to fu- 
ture generations to aim at a kind of glory, the gain 
of which has generally proved more ruinous than its 
loss. I heartily wish that every trophy of victory 
might crumble away, and that every reminiscence or 
tradition of a hero, from the beginning of the world 
to this day, could pass out of all men's memories 
at once and forever. I might feel very differently, 
to be sure, if we Northerners had anything especially 
valuable to lose by the fading of those illuminated 
names. 

I gave the pensioner (but I am afraid there may 
have been a little affectation in it) a magnificent guer- 
don of all the silver I had in my pocket, to requite 
him for having unintentionally stirred up my patriotic 
susceptibilities. He was a meek-looking, kindly old 
man, with a humble freedom and affability of manner 
that made it pleasant to converse with him. Old sol- 
diers, I know not why, seem to be more accostable 
than old sailors. One is apt to hear a growl beneath 
the smoothest courtesy of the latter. The mild veteran, 
with his peaceful voice, and gentle reverend aspect, 
told me that he had fought at a cannon all through 
the Battle of Waterloo, and escaped unhurt; he had 
now been in the hospital four or five years, and was 
married, but necessarily underwent a separation from 
his wife, who lived outside of the gates. To my in- 
quiry whether his fellow-pensioners were comfortable 
and happy, he answered, with great alacrity, " Oh yes, 
sir ! " qualifying his evidence, after a moment's con- 



UP THE THAMES. 305 

sideration, by saying in an undertone, " There are 
some people, your Honor knows, who could not be 
comfortable anywhere." I did know it, and fear that 
the system of Chelsea Hospital allows too little of that 
wholesome care and regulation of their own occupa- 
tions and interests which might assuage the sting of 
life to those naturally uncomfortable individuals by 
giving them something external to think about. But 
my old friend here was happy in the hospital, and by 
this time, very likely, is happy in heaven, in spite of 
the bloodshed that he may have caused by touching 
off a cannon at Waterloo. 

Crossing Battersea Bridge, in the neighborhood of 
Chelsea, I remember seeing a distant gleam of the 
Crystal Palace, glimmering afar in the afternoon sun- 
shine like an imaginary structure, — an air-castle by 
chance descended upon earth, and resting there one 
instant before it vanished, as we sometimes see a soap- 
bubble touch unharmed on the carpet, — a thing of 
only momentary visibility and no substance, destined 
to be overburdened and crushed down by the first 
cloud-shadow that might fall upon that spot. Even 
as I looked, it disappeared. Shall I attempt a picture 
of this exhalation of modern ingenuity, or what else 
shall I try to paint? Everything in London and 
its vicinity has been depicted innumerable times, but 
never once translated into intelligible images ; it is 
an "old, old story," never yet told, nor to be told. 
While writing these reminiscences, I am continually 
impressed with the futility of the effort to give any 
creative truth to my sketch, so that it might produce 
such pictures in the reader's mind as would cause the 
original scenes to appear familiar when afterwards be- 
held. Nor have other writers often been more suc- 

VOL. VII. 20 



306 UP THE THAMES. 

cessful in representing definite objects prophetically 
to 'my own mind. In truth, I believe that the chief 
delight and advantage of this kind of literature is not 
for any real information that it supplies to untravelled 
people, but for reviving the recollections and reawak- 
ening the emotions of persons already acquainted 
with the scenes described. Thus I found an exquisite 
pleasure, the other day, in reading Mr. Tuckerman's 
" Month in England," — a fine example of the way in 
which a refined and cultivated American looks at the 
Old Country, the things that he naturally seeks there, 
and the modes of feeling and reflection which they 
excite. Correct outlines avail little or nothing, though 
truth of coloring maybe somewhat more efficacious. 
Impressions, however, states of mind produced by in- 
teresting and remarkable objects, these, if truthfully 
and vividly recorded, may work a genuine effect, and, 
though but the result of what we see, go further to- 
wards representing the actual scene than any direct 
effort to paint it. Give the emotions that cluster 
about it, and, without being able to analyze the spell 
by which it is summoned up, you get something like a 
simulachre of the object in the midst of them. From 
some of the above reflections I draw the comfortable 
inference, that, the longer and better known a thing 
may be, so much the more eligible is it as the subject 
of a descriptive sketch. 

On a Sunday afternoon, I passed through a side- 
entrance in the time - blackened wall of a place of 
worship, and found myself among a congregation as- 
sembled in one of the transepts and the immediately 
contiguous portion of the nave. It was a vast old 
edifice, spacious enough, within the extent covered by 
its pillared roof and overspread by its stone pavement, 



UP THE THAMES. 307 

to accommodate the whole of church-going London, 
and with a far wider and loftier concave than any hu- 
man power of lungs could fill with audible prayer. 
Oaken benches were arranged in the transept, on one 
of which I seated myself, and joined, as well as I 
knew how, in the sacred business that was going for- 
ward. But when it came to the sermon, the voice of 
the preacher was puny, and so were his thoughts, and 
both seemed impertinent at such a time and place, 
where he and all of us were bodily included within a 
sublime act of religion, which could be seen above and 
around us and felt beneath our feet. The structure 
itself was the worship of the devout men of long ago, 
miraculously preserved in stone without losing an atom 
of its fragrance and fervor ; it was a kind of anthem- 
strain that they had sung and poured out of the organ 
in centuries gone by ; and being so grand and sweet, 
the Divine benevolence had willed it to be prolonged 
for the behoof of auditors unborn. I therefore came 
to the conclusion, that, in my individual case, it would 
be better and more reverent to let my eyes wander 
about the edifice than to fasten them and my thoughts 
on the evidently uninspired mortal who was venturing 
— and felt it no venture at all — to speak here above 
his breath. 

The interior of Westminster Abbey (for the reader 
recognized it, no doubt, the moment we entered) is 
built of rich brown stone ; and the whole of it — the 
lofty roof, the tall, clustered pillars, and the pointed 
arches — appears to be in consummate repair. At all 
points where decay has laid its finger, the structure is 
clamped with iron or otherwise carefully protected ; 
and being thus watched over, — whether as a place of 
ancient sanctity, a noble specimen of Gothic art, or an 



308 UP THE THAMES. 

object of national interest and pride, — it may reason- 
ably be expected to survive for as many ages as have 
passed over it already. It was sweet to feel its ven- 
erable quietude, its long-enduring pnace, and yet to 
observe how kindly and even cheerfully it received the 
sunshine of to-day, which fell from the great windows 
into the fretted aisles and arches that laid aside some- 
what of their aged gloom to welcome it. Sunshine 
always seems friendly to old abbeys, churches, and 
castles, kissing them, as it were, with a more affec- 
tionate, though still reverential familiarity, than it ac- 
cords to edifices of later date. A square of golden 
light lay on the sombre pavement of the nave, afar 
off, falling through the grand western entrance, the 
folding leaves of which were wide open, and afforded 
glimpses of people passing to and fro in the outer 
world, while we sat dimly enveloped in the solemnity 
of antique devotion. In the south transept, separated 
from us by the full breadth of the minster, there were 
painted glass windows, of which the uppermost ap- 
peared to be a great orb of many-colored radiance, 
being, indeed, a cluster of saints and angels whose 
glorified bodies formed the rays of an aureole ema- 
nating from a cross in the midst. These windows 
are modern, but combine softness with wonderful brill- 
iancy of effect. Through the pillars and arches, I saw 
that the walls in that distant region of the edifice were 
almost wholly incrusted with marble, now grown yel- 
low with time, no blank, unlettered slabs, but memori- 
als of such men as their respective generations deemed 
wisest and bravest. Some of them were commemo- 
rated merely by inscriptions on mural tablets, others 
by sculptured bas-reliefs, others (once famous, but 
now forgotten, generals or admirals, these) by ponder- 



UP THE THAMES. 309 

ous tombs that aspired towards the roof of the aisle, 
or partly curtained the immense arch of a window. 
These mountains of marble were peopled with the sis- 
terhood of Allegory, winged trumpeters, and classic 
figures in full-bottomed wigs ; but it was strange to 
observe how the old Abbey melted all such absurdities 
into the breadth of its own grandeur, even magnifying 
itself by what would elsewhere have been ridiculous. 
Methinks it is the test of Gothic sublimity to over- 
power the ridiculous without deigning to hide it ; and 
these grotesque monuments of the last century answer 
a similar purpose with the grinning faces which the 
old architects scattered among their most solemn con- 
ceptions. 

From these distant wanderings (it was my first 
visit to Westminster Abbey, and I would gladly have 
taken it all in at a glance) my eyes came back and 
began to investigate what was immediately about me 
in the transept. Close at my elbow was the pedestal 
of Canning's statue. Next beyond it was a massive 
tomb, on the spacious tablet of which reposed the full- 
length figures of a marble lord and lady, whom an 
inscription announced to be the Duke and Duchess of 
Newcastle, — the historic Duke of Charles I.'s time, 
and the fantastic Duchess, traditionally remembered 
by her poems and plays. She was of a family, as the 
record on her tomb proudly informed us, of which all 
the brothers had been valiant and all the sisters vir- 
tuous. A recent statue of Sir John Malcolm, the new 
marble as white as snow, held the next place ; and 
near by was a mural monument and bust of Sir Peter 
Warren. The round visage of this old British admiral 
has a certain interest for a New-Englander, because it 
was by no merit of his own (though he took care to 



310 UP THE THAMES. 

assume it as such), but by the valor and warlike enter- 
prise of our colonial forefathers, especially the stout 
men of Massachusetts, that he won rank and renown, 
and a tomb in Westminster Abbey. Lord Mansfield, 
a huge mass of marble done into the guise of a judi- 
cial gown and wig, with a stern face in the midst of 
the latter, sat on the other side of the transept ; and 
on the pedestal beside him was a figure of Justice, 
holding forth, instead of the customary grocer's scales, 
an actual pair of brass steelyards. It is an ancient 
and classic instrument, undoubtedly ; but I had sup- 
posed that Portia (when Shylock's pound of flesh was 
to be weighed) was the only judge that ever really 
called for it in a court of justice. Pitt and Fox were 
in the same distinguished company ; and John Kem- 
ble, in Roman costume, stood not far off, but strangely 
shorn of the dignity that is said to have enveloped him 
like a mantle in his lifetime. Perhaps the evanescent 
majesty of the stage is incompatible with the long en- 
durance of marble and the solemn reality of the tomb ; 
though, on the other hand, almost every illustrious 
personage here represented has been invested with 
more or less of stage-trickery by his sculptor. In 
truth, the artist (unless there be a divine efficacy in 
his touch, making evident a heretofore hidden dignity 
in the actual form) feels it an imperious law to remove 
his subject as far from the aspect of ordinary life as 
may be possible without sacrificing every trace of re- 
semblance. The absurd effect of the contrary course 
is very remarkable in the statue of Mr. Wilberforce, 
whose actual self, save for the lack of color, I seemed 
to behold, seated just across the aisle. 

This excellent man appears to have sunk into him- 
self in a sitting posture, with a thin leg crossed over 



UP THE THAMES. 311 

his knee, a book in one hand, and a finger of the other 
under his chin, I believe, or applied to the side of his 
nose, or to some equally familiar purpose ; while his 
exceedingly homely and wrinkled face, held a little on 
one side, twinkles at you with the shrewdest compla- 
cency, as if he were looking right into your eyes, and 
twigged something there which you had half a mind 
to conceal from him. He keeps this look so pertina- 
ciously that you feel it to be insufferably impertinent, 
and bethink yourself what common ground there may 
be between yourself and a stone image, enabling you 
to resent it. I have no doubt that the statue is as like 
Mr. Wilberforce as one pea to another, and you might 
fancy, that, at some ordinary moment, when he least 
expected it, and before he had time to smooth away 
his knowing complication of wrinkles, he had seen the 
Gorgon's head, and whitened into marble, — not only 
his personal self, but his coat and small-clothes, down 
to a button and the minutest crease of the cloth. The 
ludicrous result marks the impropriety of bestowing 
the age-long duration of marble upon small, charac- 
teristic individualities, such as might come within the 
province of waxen imagery. The sculptor should 
give permanence to the figure of a great man in his 
mood of broad and grand composure, which would ob- 
literate all mean peculiarities ; for, if the original were 
unaccustomed to such a mood, or if his features were 
incapable of assuming the guise, it seems questionable 
whether he could really have been entitled to a marble 
immortality. In point of fact, however, the English 
face and form are seldom statuesque, however illustri- 
ous the individual. 

It ill becomes me, perhaps, to have lapsed into this 
mood of half -jocose criticism in describing my first 



-312 UP THE THAMES. 

visit to Westminster Abbey, a spot which I had 
dreamed about more reverentially, from my child- 
hood upward, than any other in the world, and which 
I then beheld, and now look back upon, with profound 
gratitude to the men who built it, and a kindly in- 
terest, I may add, in the humblest personage that has 
contributed his little all to its impressiveness, by de- 
positing his dust or his memory there. But it is a 
characteristic of this grand edifice that it permits you 
to smile as freely under the roof of its central nave as 
if you stood beneath the yet grander canopy of heaven. 
Break into laughter, if you feel inclined, provided the 
vergers do not hear it echoing among the arches. In an 
ordinary church you would keep your countenance for 
fear of disturbing the sanctities or proprieties of the 
place ; but you need leave no honest and decorous por- 
tion of your human nature outside of these benign and 
truly hospitable walls. Their mild awfulness will take 
care of itself. Thus it does no harm to the general im- 
pression, when you come to be sensible that many of 
the monuments are ridiculous, and commemorate a 
mob of people who are mostly forgotten in their graves, 
and few of whom ever deserved any better boon from 
posterity. You acknowledge the force of Sir Godfrey 
Kneller's objection to being buried in Westminster 
Abbey, because " they do bury fools there ! " Never- 
theless, these grotesque carvings of marble, that break 
out in dingy-white blotches on the old freestone of the 
interior walls, have come there by as natural a process 
as might cause mosses and ivy to cluster about the 
external edifice ; for they are the historical and bio- 
graphical record of each successive age, written with 
its own hand, and all the truer for the inevitable mis- 
takes, and none the less solemn for the occasional 



UP THE THAMES. 313 

absurdity. Though you entered the Abbey expecting 
to see the tombs only of the illustrious, you are con- 
tent at last to read many names, both in literature 
and history, that have now lost the reverence of man- 
kind, if indeed they ever really possessed it. Let these 
men rest in peace. Even if you miss a name or two 
that you hoped to find there, they may well be spared. 
It matters little a few more or less, or whether West- 
minster Abbey contains or lacks any one man's grave, 
so long as the Centuries, each with the crowd of per- 
sonages that it deemed memorable, have chosen it as 
their place of honored sepulture, and laid themselves 
down under its pavement. The inscriptions and de- 
vices on the walls are rich with evidences of the fluc- 
tuating tastes, fashions, manners, opinions, prejudices, 
follies, wisdoms of the past, and thus they combine 
into a more truthful memorial of their dead times 
than any individual epitaph -maker ever meant to 
write. 

When the services were over, many of the audience 
seemed inclined to linger in the nave or wander away 
among the mysterious aisles ; for there is nothing in 
this world so fascinating as a Gothic minster, which 
always invites you deeper and deeper into its heart 
both by vast revelations and shadowy concealments. 
Through the open-work screen that divides the nave 
from the chancel and choir, we could discern the gleam 
of a marvellous window, but were debarred from en- 
trance into that more sacred precinct of the Abbey by 
the vergers. These vigilant officials (doing their duty 
all the more strenuously because no fees could be ex- 
acted from Sunday visitors) flourished their staves, 
and drove us towards the grand entrance like a flock 
of sheep. Lingering through one of the aisles, I hap- 



314 UP THE THAMES. 

pened to look down, and found my foot upon a stone 
inscribed with this familiar exclamation, " O rare Ben 
Jonson ! " and remembered the story of stout old 
Ben's burial in that spot, standing upright, — not, I 
presume, on account of any unseemly reluctance on 
his part to lie down in the dust, like other men, but 
because standing-room was all that could reasonably 
be demanded for a poet among the slumberous nota- 
bilities of his age. It made me weary to think of it I 

— such a prodigious length of time to keep one's feet! 

— apart from the honor of the thing, it would cer- 
tainly have been better for Ben to stretch himself at 
ease in some country churchyard. To this day, how- 
ever, I fancy that there is a contemptuous alloy mixed 
up with the admiration which the higher classes of 
English society profess for their literary men. 

Another day — in truth, many other days — I sought 
out Poets' Corner, and found a sign-board and pointed 
finger directing the visitor to it, on the corner house of 
a little lane leading towards the rear of the Abbey. 
The entrance is at the southeastern end of the south 
transept, and it is used, on ordinary occasions, as the 
only free mode of access to the building. It is no 
spacious arch, but a small, lowly door, passing through 
which, and pushing aside an inner screen that partly 
keeps out an exceedingly chill wind, you find yourself 
in a dim nook of the Abbey, with the busts of poets 
gazing at you from the otherwise bare stone-work of 
the walls. Great poets, too ; for Ben Jonson is right 
behind the door, and Spenser's tablet is next, and 
Butler's on the same side of the transept, and Milton's 
(whose bust you know at once by its resemblance to 
one of his portraits, though older, more wrinkled, and 
sadder than that) is close by, and a profile-medallion 



UP THE THAMES. 315 

of Gray beneath it. A window high aloft sheds down 
a dusky daylight on these and many other sculptured 
marbles, now as yellow as old parchment, that cover 
the three walls of the nook up to an elevation of about 
twenty feet above the pavement. It seemed to me 
that I had always been familiar with the spot. En- 
joying a humble intimacy — and how much of my life 
had else been a dreary solitude ! — with many of its 
inhabitants, I could not feel myself a stranger there. 
It was delightful to be among them. There was a 
genial awe, mingled with a sense of kind and friendly 
presences about me ; and I was glad, moreover, at 
finding so many of them there together, in fit compan- 
ionship, mutually recognized and duly honored, all 
reconciled now, whatever distant generations, whatever 
personal hostility or other miserable impediment, had 
divided them far asunder while they lived. I have 
never felt a similar interest in any other tombstones, 
nor have I ever been deeply moved by the imaginary 
presence of other famous dead people. A poet's ghost 
is the only one that survives for his fellow-mortals, 
after his bones are in the dust, — and he not ghostly, 
but cherishing many hearts with his own warmth in 
the chillest atmosphere of life. What other fame is 
worth aspiring for ? Or, let me speak it more boldly, 
what other long-enduring fame can exist ? We neither 
remember nor care anything for the past, except as 
the poet has made it intelligibly noble and sublime to 
our comprehension. The shades of the mighty have 
no substance ; they flit ineffectually about the dark- 
ened stage where they performed their momentary 
parts, save when the poet has thrown his own creative 
soul into them, and imparted a more vivid life than 
ever they were able to manifest to mankind while they 



316 UP THE THAMES. 

dwelt in the body. And therefore — though he cun- 
ningly disguises himself in their armor, their robes of 
state, or kingly purple — it is not the statesman, the 
warrior, or the monarch that survives, but the despised 
poet, whom they may have fed with their crumbs, and 
to whom they owe all that they now are or have, — a 
name! 

In the foregoing paragraph I seem to have been be- 
trayed into a flight above or beyond the customary 
level that best agrees with me ; but it represents fairly 
enough the emotions with which I passed from Poets ? 
Corner into the chapels, which contain the sepulchres 
of kings and great people. They are magnificent even 
now, and must have been inconceivably so when the 
marble slabs and pillars wore their new polish, and 
the statues retained the brilliant colors with which 
they were originally painted, and the shrines their rich 
gilding, of which the sunlight still shows a glimmer 
or a streak, though the sunbeam itself looks tarnished 
with antique dust. Yet this recondite portion of the 
Abbey presents few memorials of personages whom 
we care to remember. The shrine of Edward the Con- 
fessor has a certain interest, because it was so long 
held in religious reverence, and because the very dust 
that settled upon it was formerly worth gold. The 
helmet and war-saddle of Henry V., worn at Agin- 
court, and now suspended above his tomb, are memo- 
rable objects, but more for Shakespeare's sake than 
the victor's own. Rank has been the general passport 
to admission here. Noble and regal dust is as cheap 
as dirt under the pavement. I am glad to recollect, 
indeed (and it is too characteristic of the right Eng- 
lish spirit not to be mentioned), one or two gigantic 
statues of great mechanicians, who contributed largely 



UP THE THAMES. 317 

to the material welfare of England, sitting familiarly 
in theii* marble chairs among forgotten kings and 
queens. Otherwise, the quaintness of the earlier mon- 
uments, and the antique beauty of some of them, are 
what chiefly gives them value. Nevertheless, Addison 
is buried among the men of rank ; not on the plea of 
his literary fame, however, but because he was con- 
nected with nobility by marriage, and had been a Sec- 
retary of State. His gravestone is inscribed with a 
resounding verse from Tickell's lines to his memory, 
the only lines by which Tickell himself is now remem- 
bered, and which (as I discovered a little while ago) 
he mainly filched from an obscure versifier of some- 
what earlier date. 

Returning to Poets' Corner, I looked again at the 
walls, and wondered how the requisite hospitality can 
be shown to poets of our own and the succeeding ages. 
There is hardly a foot of space left, although room 
has lately been found for a bust of Southey and a full- 
length statue of Campbell. At best, only a little por- 
tion of the Abbey is dedicated to poets, literary men, 
musical composers, and others of the gentle artist 
breed, and even into that small nook of sanctity men 
of other pursuits have thought it decent to intrude 
themselves. Methinks the tuneful throng, being at 
home here, should recollect how they were treated in 
their lifetime, and turn the cold shoulder, looking 
askance at nobles and official personages, however 
worthy of honorable interment elsewhere. Yet it shows 
aptly and truly enough what portion of the world's re- 
gard and honor has heretofore been awarded to literary 
eminence in comparison with other modes of greatness, 
— this dimly lighted corner (nor even that quietly to 
themselves) in the vast minster, the walls of which 



318 UP THE THAMES. 

are sheathed and hidden under marble that has been 
wasted upon the illustrious obscure. Nevertheless, it 
may not be worth while to quarrel with the world on 
this account ; for, to confess the very truth, their own 
little nook contains more than one poet whose memory 
is kept alive by his monument, instead of imbuing the 
senseless stone with a spiritual immortality, — men of 
whom you do not ask, " Where is he ? " but, " Why is 
he here ? " I estimate that all the literary people who 
really make an essential part of one's inner life, in- 
cluding the period since English literature first ex- 
isted, might have ample elbow-room to sit down and 
quaff their draughts of Castaly round Chaucer's 
broad, horizontal tombstone. These divinest poets 
consecrate the spot, and throw a reflected glory over 
the humblest of their companions. And as for the 
latter, it is to be hoped that they may have long out- 
grown the characteristic jealousies and morbid sensi- 
bilities of their craft, and have found out the little 
value (probably not amounting to sixpence in immor- 
tal currency) of the posthumous renown which they 
once aspired to win. It would be a poor compliment 
to a dead poet to fancy him leaning out of the sky and 
snuffing up the impure breath of earthly praise. 

Yet we cannot easily rid ourselves of the notion 
that those who have bequeathed us the inheritance of 
an undying song would fain be conscious of its endless 
reverberations in the hearts of mankind, and would 
delight, among sublimer enjoyments, to see their 
names emblazoned in such a treasure-place of great 
memories as Westminster Abbey. There are some 
men, at all events, — true and tender poets, moreover, 
and fully deserving of the honor, — whose spirits, I 
feel certain, would linger a little while about Poets' 



UP THE THAMES. 319 

Corner, for the sake of witnessing their own apotheo- 
sis among their kindred. They have had a strong 
natural yearning, not so much for applause as sympa- 
thy, which the cold fortune of their lifetime did but 
scantily supply ; so that this unsatisfied appetite may 
make itself felt upon sensibilities at once so delicate 
and retentive, even a step or two beyond the grave. 
Leigh Hunt, for example, would be pleased, even now, 
if he could learn that his bust had been reposited in 
the midst of the old poets whom he admired and 
loved ; though there is hardly a man among the au- 
thors of to-day and yesterday whom the judgment of 
Englishmen would be less likely to place there. He 
deserves it, however, if not for his verse (the value of 
which I do not estimate, never having been able to 
read it), yet for his delightful prose, his unmeasured 
poetry, the inscrutable happiness of his touch, working 
soft miracles by a life-process like the growth of grass 
and flowers. As with all such gentle writers, his page 
sometimes betrayed a vestige of affectation, but, the 
next moment, a rich, natural luxuriance overgrew and 
buried it out of sight. I knew him a little, and (since, 
Heaven be praised, few English celebrities whom I 
chanced to meet have enfranchised my pen by their 
decease, and as I assume no liberties with living men) 
I will conclude this rambling article by sketching my 
first interview with Leigh Hunt. 

He was then at Hammersmith, occupying a very 
plain and shabby little house, in a contiguous range of 
others like it, with no prospect but that of an ugly vil- 
lage street, and certainly nothing to gratify his crav- 
ing for a tasteful environment, inside or out. A slat- 
ternly maid-servant opened the door for us, and he 
himself stood in the entry, a beautiful and venerable 



320 UP THE THAMES. 

old man, buttoned to the chin in a black dress-coat, 
tall and slender, with a countenance quietly alive all 
over, and the gentlest and most naturally courteous 
manner. He ushered us into his little study, or par- 
lor, or both, — a very forlorn room, with poor paper- 
hangings and carpet, few books, no pictures that I re- 
member, and an awful lack of upholstery. I touch 
distinctly upon these external blemishes and this 
nudity of adornment, not that they would be worth 
mentioning in a sketch of other remarkable persons, 
but because Leigh Hunt was born with such a faculty 
of enjoying all beautiful things that it seemed as if 
Fortune did him as much wrong in not supplying 
them as in withholding a sufficiency of vital breath 
from ordinary men. All kinds of mild magnificence, 
tempered by his taste, would have become him well ; 
but he had not the grim dignity that assumes naked- 
ness as the better robe. 

I have said that he was a beautiful old man. In 
truth, I never saw a finer countenance, either as to 
the mould of features or the expression, nor any that 
showed the play of feeling so perfectly without the 
slightest theatrical emphasis. It was like a child's 
face in this respect. At my first glimpse of him, 
when he met us in the entry, I discerned that he was 
old, his long hair being white and his wrinkles many ; 
it was an aged visage, in short, such as I had not at 
all expected to see, in spite of dates, because his books 
talk to the reader with the tender vivacity of youth. 
But when he began to speak, and as he grew more ear- 
nest in conversation, I ceased to be sensible of his 
age; sometimes, indeed, its dusky shadow darkened 
through the gleam which his sprightly thoughts dif- 
fused about his face, but then another flash of youth 



UP THE THAMES. 321 

came out of his eyes and made an illumination again. 
I never witnessed such a wonderfully illusive trans- 
formation, before or since ; and, to this day, trusting 
only to my recollection, I should find it difficult to de- 
cide which was his genuine and stable predicament, — 
youth or age. I have met no Englishman whose man- 
ners seemed to me so agreeable, soft, rather than pol- 
ished, wholly unconventional, the natural growth of a 
kindly and sensitive disposition without any reference 
to rule, or else obedient to some rule so subtile that 
the nicest observer could not detect the application 
of it. 

His eyes were dark and very fine, and his delight- 
ful voice accompanied their visible language like mu- 
sic. He appeared to be exceedingly appreciative of 
whatever was passing among those who surrounded 
him, and especially of the vicissitudes in the conscious- 
ness of the person to whom he happened to be address- 
ing himself at the moment. I felt that no effect upon 
my mind of what he uttered, no emotion, however 
transitory, in myself, escaped his notice, though not 
from any positive vigilance on his part, but because 
his faculty of observation was so penetrative and deli- 
cate ; and to say the truth, it a little confused me to 
discern always a ripple on his mobile face, responsive 
to any slightest breeze that passed over the inner re- 
servoir of my sentiments, and seemed thence to extend 
to a similar reservoir within himself. On matters of 
feeling, and within a certain depth, you might spare 
yourself the trouble of utterance, because he already 
knew what you wanted to say, and perhaps a little 
more than you would have spoken. His figure was 
full of gentle movement, though, somehow, without 
disturbing its quietude ; and as he talked, he kept 

VOL. VII. 21 



B22 UP THE THAMES. 

folding his hands nervously, and betokened in many 
ways a fine and immediate sensibility, quick to feel 
pleasure or pain, though scarcely capable, I should im- 
agine, of a passionate experience in either direction. 
There was not an English trait in him from head to 
foot, morally, intellectually, or physically. Beef, ale, 
or stout, brandy or port-wine, entered not at all into 
his composition. In his earlier life, he appears to 
have given evidences of courage and sturdy principle, 
and of a tendency to fling himself into the rough 
struggle of humanity on the liberal side. It would be 
taking too much upon myself to affirm that this was 
merely a projection of his fancy world into the actual, 
and that he never could have hit a downright blow, 
and was altogether an unsuitable person to receive 
one. I beheld him not in his armor, but in his peace- 
fulest robes. Nevertheless, drawing my conclusion 
merely from what I saw, it would have occurred to me 
that his main deficiency was a lack of grit. Though 
anything but a timid man, the combative and defen- 
sive elements were not prominently developed in his 
character, and could have been made available only 
when he put an unnatural force upon his instincts. 
It was on this account, and also because of the fine- 
ness of his nature generally, that the English appre- 
ciated him no better, and left this sweet and delicate 
poet poor, and with scanty laurels, in his declining 
age. 

It was not, I think, from his American blood that 
Leigh Hunt derived either his amiability or his peace- 
ful inclinations ; at least, I do not see how we can 
reasonably claim the former quality as a national 
characteristic, though the latter might have been 
fairly inherited from his ancestors on the mother's 



UP THE THAMES. 323 

side, who were Pennsylvania Quakers. But the kind 
of excellence that distinguished him — his fineness, 
subtilty, and grace — was that which the richest cul- 
tivation has heretofore tended to develop in the hap- 
pier examples of American genius, and which (though 
I say it a little reluctantly) is perhaps what our future 
intellectual advancement may make general among us. 
His person, at all events, was thoroughly American, 
and of the best type, as were likewise his manners ; 
for we are the best as well as the worst mannered 
people in the world. 

Leigh Hunt loved dearly to be praised. That is to 
say, he desired sympathy as a flower seeks sunshine, 
and perhaps profited by it as much in the richer depth 
of coloring that it imparted to his ideas. In response 
to all that we ventured to express about his writings 
(and, for my part, I went quite to the extent of my 
conscience, which was a long way, and there left the 
matter to a lady and a young girl, who happily were 
with me), his face shone, and he manifested great de- 
light, with a perfect, and yet delicate, frankness, for 
which I loved him. He could not tell us, he said, the 
happiness that such appreciation gave him ; it always 
took him by surprise, he remarked, for — perhaps be- 
cause he cleaned his own boots, and performed other 
little ordinary offices for himself — he never had been 
conscious of anything wonderful in his own person. 
And then he smiled, making himself and all the poor 
little parlor about him beautiful thereby. It is usu- 
ally the hardest thing in the world to praise a man to 
his face ; but Leigh Hunt received the incense with 
such gracious satisfaction (feeling it to be sympathy, 
not vulgar praise), that the only difficulty was to keep 
the enthusiasm of the moment within the limit of 



324 UP THE THAMES. 

permanent opinion. A storm had suddenly come up 
while we were talking ; the rain poured, the lightning 
flashed, and the thunder broke ; but I hope, and have 
great pleasure in believing, that it was a sunny hour 
for Leigh Hunt. Nevertheless, it was not to my voice 
that he most favorably inclined his ear, but to those 
of my companions. Women are the fit ministers at 
such a shrine. 

He must have suffered keenly in his lifetime, and 
enjoyed keenly, keeping his emotions so much upon 
the surface as he seemed to do, and convenient for 
everybody to play upon. Being of a cheerful temper- 
ament, happiness had probably the upperhand. His 
was a light, mildly joyous nature, gentle, graceful, yet 
seldom attaining to that deepest grace which results 
from power ; for beauty, like woman, its human repre- 
sentative, dallies with the gentle, but yields its con- 
summate favor only to the strong. I imagine that 
Leigh Hunt may have been more beautiful when I 
met him, both in person and character, than in his ear- 
lier days. As a young man, I could conceive of his 
being finical in certain moods, but not now, when the 
gravity of age shed a venerable grace about him. I 
rejoiced to hear him say that he was favored with most 
confident and cheering anticipations in respect to a 
future life ; and there were abundant proofs, through- 
out our interview, of an unrepining spirit, resignation, 
quiet relinquishment of the worldly benefits that were 
denied him, thankful enjoyment of whatever he had 
to enjoy, and piety, and hope shining onward into the 
dusk, — all of which gave a reverential cast to the 
feeling with which we parted from him. I wish that 
he could have had one full draught of prosperity be- 
fore he died. As a matter of artistic propriety, it 



UP THE THAMES. 325 

would have been delightful to see him inhabiting a 
beautiful house of his own, in an Italian climate, with 
all sorts of elaborate upholstery and minute elegances 
about him, and a succession of tender and lovely wo- 
men to praise his sweet poetry from morning to night. 
I hardly know whether it is my fault, or the effect of 
a weakness in Leigh Hunt's character, that I should 
be sensible of a regret of this nature, when, at the 
same time, I sincerely believe that he has found an 
infinity of better things in the world whither he has 
gone. 

At our leave-taking he grasped me warmly by both 
hands, and seemed as much interested in our whole 
party as if he had known us for years. All this was 
genuine feeling, a quick, luxuriant growth out of his 
heart, which was a soil for flower-seeds of rich and 
rare varieties, not acorns, but a true heart, neverthe- 
less. Several years afterwards I met him for the last 
time at a London dinner-party, looking sadly broken 
down by infirmities ; and my final recollection of the 
beautiful old man presents him arm in arm with, nay, 
if I mistake not, partly embraced and supported by, 
another beloved and honored poet, whose minstrel- 
name, since he has a week-day one for his personal oc- 
casions, I will venture to speak. It was Barry Corn- 
wall, whose kind introduction had first made me known 
to Leigh Hunt. 



OUTSIDE GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVEPTY. 

Becoming an inhabitant of a great English town, 
I often turned aside from the prosperous thorough- 
fares (where the edifices, the shops, and the bustling 
crowd differed not so much from scenes with which I 
was familiar in my own country), and went design- 
edly astray among precincts that reminded me of some 
of Dickens's grimiest pages. There I caught glimpses 
of a people and a mode of life that were comparatively 
new to my observation, a sort of sombre phantasma- 
goric spectacle, exceedingly undelightful to behold, 
yet involving a singular interest and even fascination 
in its ugliness. 

Dirt, one would fancy, is plenty enough all over the 
world, being the symbolic accompaniment of the foul 
incrustation which began to settle over and bedim all 
earthly things as soon as Eve had bitten the apple ; 
ever since which hapless epoch, her daughters have 
chiefly been engaged in a desperate and unavailing 
struggle to get rid of it. But the dirt of a poverty- 
stricken English street is a monstrosity unknown on 
our side of the Atlantic. It reigns supreme within its 
own limits, and is inconceivable everywhere beyond 
them. We enjoy the great advantage, that the bright- 
ness and dryness of our atmosphere keep everything 
clean that the sun shines upon, converting the larger 
portion of our impurities into transitory dust which 
the next wind can sweep away, in contrast with the 
damp, adhesive grime that incorporates itself with al] 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 327 

surfaces (unless continually and painfully cleansed) 
in the chill moisture of the English air. Then the all- 
pervading smoke of the city, abundantly intermingled 
with the sable snow-flakes of bituminous coal, hover- 
ing overhead, descending, and alighting on pavements 
and rich architectural fronts, on the snowy muslin of 
the ladies, and the gentlemen's starched collars and 
shirt-bosoms, invests even the better streets in a half- 
mourning garb. It is beyond the resources of Wealth 
to keep the smut away from its premises or its own 
fingers' ends ; and as for Poverty, it surrenders itself 
to the dark influence without a struggle. Along with 
disastrous circumstances, pinching need, adversity so 
lengthened out as to constitute the rule of life, there 
comes a certain chill depression of the spirits which 
seems especially to shudder at cold water. In view of 
so wretched a state of things, we accept the ancient 
Deluge not merely as an insulated phenomenon, but 
as a periodical necessity, and acknowledge that noth- 
ing less than such a general washing-day could suffice 
to cleanse the slovenly old world of its moral and ma- 
terial dirt. 

Gin-shops, or what the English call spirit-vaults, are 
numerous in the vicinity of these poor streets, and are 
set off with the magnificence of gilded door-posts, tar- 
nished by contact with the unclean customers who 
haunt there. Ragged children come thither with old 
shaving-mugs, or broken-nosed teapots, or any such 
makeshift receptacle, to get a little poison or madness 
for their parents, who deserve no better requital at 
their hands for having engendered them. Inconceiv- 
ably sluttish women enter at noonday and stand at the 
counter among boon-companions of both sexes, stirring 
up misery and jollity in a bumper together, and quaff- 



328 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

ing off the mixture with a relish. As for the men, 
they lounge there continually, drinking till they are 
drunken, — drinking as long as they have a half- 
penny left, and then, as it seemed to me, waiting for 
a sixpenny miracle to be wrought in their pockets so 
as to enable them to be drunken again. Most of these 
establishments have a significant advertisement of 
"Beds," doubtless for the accommodation of their 
customers in the interval between one intoxication and 
the next. I never could find it in my heart, however, 
utterly to condemn these sad revellers, and should cer- 
tainly wait till I had some better consolation to offer 
before depriving them of their dram of gin, though 
death itself were in the glass; for methought their 
poor souls needed such fiery stimulant to lift them a 
little way out of the smothering squalor of both their 
outward and interior life, giving them glimpses and 
suggestions, even if bewildering ones, of a spiritual ex- 
istence that limited their present misery. The temper- 
ance-reformers unquestionably derive their commission 
from the Divine Beneficence, but have never been 
taken fully into its counsels. All may not be lost, 
though those good men fail. 

Pawnbrokers' establishments, distinguished by the 
mystic symbol of the three golden balls, were conven- 
iently accessible ; though what personal property these 
wretched people could possess, capable of being esti- 
mated in silver or copper, so as to afford a basis for 
a loan, was a problem that still perplexes me. Old 
clothesmen, likewise, dwelt hard by, and hung out an- 
cient garments to dangle in the wind. There were 
butchers' shops, too, of a class adapted to the neigh- 
borhood, presenting no such generously fattened car- 
casses as Englishmen love to gaze at in the market, 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 329 

no stupendous halves of mighty beeves, no dead hogs, 
or muttons ornamented with carved bas-reliefs of fat 
on their ribs and shoulders, in a peculiarly British 
style of art, — not these, but bits and gobbets of lean 
meat, selvages snipt off from steaks, tough and stringy 
morsels, bare bones smitten away from joints by the 
cleaver ; tripe, liver, bullocks' feet, or whatever else 
was cheapest and divisible into the smallest lots. I am 
afraid that even such delicacies came to many of their 
tables hardly of tener than Christmas. In the windows 
of other little shops you saw half a dozen wizened her- 
rings ; some eggs in a basket, looking so dingily an- 
tique that your imagination smelt them; fly-speckled 
biscuits, segments of a hungry cheese, pipes and papers 
of tobacco. Now and then a sturdy milk-woman passed 
by with a wooden yoke over her shoulders, supporting 
a pail on either side, filled with a whitish fluid, the 
composition of which was water and chalk and the 
milk of a sickly cow, who gave the best she had, poor 
thing ! but could scarcely make it rich or wholesome, 
spending her life in some close city-nook and pastur- 
ing on strange food. I have seen, once or twice, a 
donkey coming into one of these streets with panniers 
full of vegetables, and departing with a return cargo 
of what looked like rubbish and street-sweepings. No 
other commerce seemed to exist, except, possibly, a girl 
might offer you a pair of stockings or a worked collar, 
or a man whisper something mysterious about won- 
derfully cheap cigars. And yet I remember seeing 
female hucksters in those regions, with their wares 
on the edge of the sidewalk and their own seats right 
in the carriage-way, pretending to sell half-decayed 
oranges and apples, toffy, Ormskirk cakes, combs, and 
cheap jewelry, the coarsest kind of crockery, and little 



330 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

plates of oysters, — knitting patiently all day long, and 
removing their undiminished stock in trade at night- 
fall. All indispensable importations from other quar- 
ters of the town were on a remarkably diminutive 
scale : for example, the wealthier inhabitants pur- 
chased their coal by the wheelbarrow-load, and the 
poorer ones by the peck-measure. It was a curious 
and melancholy spectacle, when an overladen coal-cart 
happened to pass through the street and drop a hand- 
ful or two of its burden in the mud, to see half a dozen 
women and children scrambling for the treasure-trove, 
like a flock of hens and chickens gobbling up some 
spilt corn. In this connection I may as well mention 
a commodity of boiled snails (for such they appeared 
to me, though probably a marine production) which 
used to be peddled from door to door, piping hot, as 
an article of cheap nutriment. 

The population of these dismal abodes appeared to 
consider the sidewalks and middle of the street as 
their common hall. In a drama of low life, the unity 
of place might be arranged rigidly according to the 
classic rule, and the street be the one locality in which 
every scene and incident should occur. Courtship, 
quarrels, plot and counterplot, conspiracies for rob- 
bery and murder, family difficulties or agreements, — 
all such matters, I doubt not, are constantly discussed 
or transacted in this sky-roofed saloon, so regally hung 
with its sombre canopy of coal-smoke. Whatever the 
disadvantages of the English climate, the only com- 
fortable or wholesome part of life, for the city poor, 
must be spent in the open air. The stifled and 
squalid rooms where they lie down at night, whole 
families and neighborhoods together, or sulkily elbow 
one another in the daytime, when a settled rain drives 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 331 

them within doors, are worse horrors than it is worth 
while (without a practical object in view) to admit 
into one's imagination. No wonder that they creep 
forth from the foul mystery of their interiors, stumble 
down from their garrets, or scramble up out of their 
cellars, on the upper step of which you may see the 
grimy housewife, before the shower is ended, letting 
the raindrops gutter down her visage ; while her chil- 
dren (an impish progeny of cavernous recesses below 
the common sphere of humanity) swarm into the day- 
light and attain all that they know of personal purifi- 
cation in the nearest mud-puddle. It might almost 
make a man doubt the existence of his own soul, to 
observe how Nature has flimg these little wretches 
into the street and left them there, so evidently re- 
garding them as nothing worth, and how all mankind 
acquiesce in the great mother's estimate of her off- 
spring. For, if they are to have no immortality, what 
superior claim can I assert for mine ? And how diffi- 
cult to believe that anything so precious as a germ of 
immortal growth can have been buried under this dirt- 
heap, plunged into this cesspool of misery and vice ! 
As often as I beheld the scene, it affected me with sur- 
prise and loathsome interest, much resembling, though 
in a far intenser degree, the feeling with which, when 
a boy, I used to turn over a plank or an old log that 
had long lain on the damp ground, and found a viva- 
cious multitude of unclean and devilish - looking in- 
sects scampering to and fro beneath it. Without an 
infinite faith, there seemed as much * prospect of a 
blessed futurity for those hideous bugs and many- 
footed worms as for these brethren of our humanity 
and co-heirs of all our heavenly inheritance. Ah, 
what a mystery ! Slowly, slowly, as after groping at 



332 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

the bottom of a deep, noisome, stagnant pool, my hope 
struggles upward to the surface, bearing the half- 
drowned body of a child along with it, and heaving it 
aloft for its life, and my own life, and all our lives. 
Unless these slime-clogged nostrils can be made capa- 
ble of inhaling celestial air, I know not how the purest 
and most intellectual of us can reasonably expect ever 
to taste a breath of it. The whole question of eternity 
is staked there. If a single one of those helpless little 
ones be lost, the world is lost ! 

The women and children greatly preponderate in 
such places ; the men probably wandering abroad in 
quest of that daily miracle, a dinner and a drink, or 
perhaps slumbering in the daylight that they may the 
better follow out their cat-like rambles through the 
dark. Here are women with young figures, but old, 
wrinkled, yellow faces, tanned and blear-eyed with the 
smoke which they cannot spare from their scanty fires, 
— it being too precious for its warmth to be swallowed 
by the chimney. Some of them sit on the doorsteps, 
nursing their unwashed babies at bosoms which we will 
glance aside from, for the sake of our mothers and all 
womanhood, because the fairest spectacle is here the 
foulest. Yet motherhood, in these dark abodes, is 
strangely identical with what we have all known it to 
be in the happiest homes. Nothing, as I remember, 
smote me with more grief and pity (all the more poign 
ant because perplexingly entangled with an inclina- 
tion to smile) than to hear a gaunt and ragged mother 
priding herself on the pretty ways of her ragged and 
skinny infant, just as a young matron might, when she 
invites her lady friends to admire her plump, white- 
robed darling in the nursery. Indeed, no womanly 
characteristic seemed to have altogether perished out 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 333 

of these poor souls. It was the very same creature 
whose tender torments make the rapture of our young 
days, whom we love, cherish, and protect, and rely 
upon in life and death, and whom we delight to see 
beautify her beauty with rich robes and set it off with 
jewels, though now fantastically masquerading in a 
garb of tatters, wholly unfit for her to handle. I rec- 
ognized her, over and over again, in the groups round 
a doorstep or in the descent of a cellar, chatting with 
prodigious earnestness about intangible trifles, laugh- 
ing for a little jest, sympathizing at almost the same 
instant with one neighbor's sunshine and another's 
shadow ; wise, simple, sly, and patient, yet easily per- 
turbed, and breaking into small feminine ebullitions 
of spite, wrath, and jealousy, tornadoes of a moment, 
such as vary the social atmosphere of her silken- skirted 
sisters, though smothered into propriety by dint of a 
well-bred habit. Not that there was an absolute de- 
ficiency of good-breeding, even here. It often sur- 
prised me to witness a courtesy and deference among 
these ragged folks, which, having seen it, I did not 
thoroughly believe in, wondering whence it should 
have come. I am persuaded, however, that there 
were laws of intercourse which they never violated, 
— a code of the cellar, the garret, the common stair- 
case, the doorstep, and the pavement, which perhaps 
had as deep a foundation in natural fitness as the code 
of the drawing-room. 

Yet again I doubt whether I may not have been ut- 
tering folly in the last two sentences, when I reflect 
how rude and rough these specimens of feminine char- 
acter generally were. They had a readiness with their 
hands that reminded me of Molly Seagrim and other 
heroines in Fielding's novels. For example, I have 



334 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

seen a woman meet a man in the street, and, for no 
reason perceptible to me, suddenly clutch him by the 
hair and cuff his ears, — an infliction which he bore 
with exemplary patience, only snatching the very ear- 
liest opportunity to take to his heels. Where a sharp 
tongue will not serve the purpose, they trust to the 
sharpness of their finger-nails, or incarnate a whole 
vocabulary of vituperative words in a resounding slap, 
or the downright blow of a doubled fist. All English 
people, I imagine, are influenced in a far greater de- 
gree than ourselves by this simple and honest ten- 
dency, in cases of disagreement, to batter one another's 
persons ; and whoever has seen a crowd of English 
ladies (for instance, at the door of the Sistine Chapel, 
in Holy Week) will be satisfied that their belligerent 
propensities are kept in abeyance only by a merciless 
rigor on the part of society. It requires a vast deal of 
refinement to spiritualize their large physical endow- 
ments. Such being the case with the delicate orna- 
ments of the drawing-room, it is less to be wondered at 
that women who live mostly in the open air, amid the 
coarsest kind of companionship and occupation, should 
carry on the intercourse of life with a freedom un- 
known to any class of American females, though still, 
I am resolved to think, compatible with a generous 
breadth of natural propriety. It shocked me, at first, 
to see them (of all ages, even elderly, as well as in- 
fants that could just toddle across the street alone) go- 
ing about in the mud and mire, or through the dusky 
snow and slosh of a severe week in winter, with petti- 
coats high uplifted above bare, red feet and legs ; but 
I was comforted by observing that both shoes and 
stockings generally reappeared with better weather, 
having been thriftily kept out of the damp for the con- 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 335 

yenience of dry feet within doors. Their hardihood 
was wonderful, and their strength greater than could 
have been expected from such spare diet as they prob- 
ably lived upon. I have seen them carrying on their 
heads great burdens under which they walked as freely 
as if they were fashionable bonnets ; or sometimes the 
burden was huge enough almost to cover the whole 
person, looked at from behind, — as in Tuscan villages 
you may see the girls coming in from the country with 
great bundles of green twigs upon their backs, so that 
they resemble locomotive masses of verdure and fra- 
grance. But these poor English women seemed to be 
laden with rubbish, incongruous and indescribable, 
such as bones and rags, the sweepings of the house and 
of the street, a merchandise gathered up from what 
poverty itself had thrown away, a heap of filthy stuff 
analogous to Christian's bundle of sin. 

Sometimes, though very seldom, I detected a certain 
gracefulness among the younger women that was alto- 
gether new to my observation. It was a charm proper 
to the lowest class. One girl I particularly remem- 
ber, in a garb none of the cleanest and nowise smart, 
and herself exceedingly coarse in all respects, but yet 
endowed with a sort of witchery, a native charm, a 
robe of simple beauty and suitable behavior that she 
was born in and had never been tempted to throw off, 
because she had really nothing else to put on. Eve 
herself could not have been more natural. Nothing 
was affected, nothing imitated ; no proper grace was 
vulgarized by an effort to assume the manners or 
adornments of another sphere. This kind of beauty, 
arrayed in a fitness of its own, is probably vanishing 
out of the world, and will certainly never be found in 
America, where all the girls, whether daughters of the 



336 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

upper-tendom, the mediocrity, the cottage, or the ken- 
nel, aim at one standard of dress and deportment, sel- 
dom accomplishing a perfectly triumphant hit or an 
utterly absurd failure. Those words, " genteel " and 
" ladylike," are terrible ones, and do us infinite mis- 
chief, but it is because (at least, I hope so) we are in 
a transition state, and shall emerge into a higher mode 
of simplicity than has ever been known to past ages. 

In such disastrous circumstances as I have been at- 
tempting to describe, it was beautiful to observe what 
a mysterious efficacy still asserted itself in character. 
A woman, evidently poor as the poorest of her neigh- 
bors, would be knitting or sewing on the doorstep, just 
as fifty other women were ; but round about her skirts 
(though wofully patched) you would be sensible of 
a certain sphere of decency, which, it seemed to me, 
could not have been kept more impregnable in the 
cosiest little sitting-room, where the teakettle on the 
hob was humming its good old song of domestic peace. 
Maidenhood had a similar power. The evil habit that 
grows upon us in this harsh world makes me faithless 
to my own better perceptions ; and yet I have seen 
girls in these wretched streets, on whose virgin purity, 
judging merely from their impression on my instincts 
as they passed by, I should have deemed it safe, at 
the moment, to stake my life. The next moment, how- 
ever, as the surrounding flood of moral uncleanness 
surged over their footsteps, I would not have staked a 
spike of thistle-down on the same wager. Yet the 
miracle was within the scope of Providence, which is 
equally wise and equally beneficent (even to those poor 
girls, though I acknowledge the fact without the re- 
motest comprehension of the mode of it), whether they 
were pure or what we fellow-sinners call vile. Unless 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 337 

your faith be deep-rooted and of most vigorous growth, 
it is the safer way not to turn aside into this region so 
suggestive of miserable doubt. It was a place " with 
dreadful faces thronged," wrinkled and grim with vice 
and wretchedness ; and, thinking over the line of Mil- 
ton here quoted, I come to the conclusion that those 
ugly lineaments which startled Adam and Eve, as they 
looked backward to the closed gate of Paradise, were 
no fiends from the pit, but the more terrible foreshad^ 
owings of what so many of their descendants were to 
be. God help them, and us likewise, their brethren 
and sisters ! Let me add, that, forlorn, ragged, care- 
worn, hopeless, dirty, haggard, hungry, as they were, 
the most pitiful thing of all was to see the sort of pa- 
tience with which they accepted their lot, as if they had 
been born into the world for that and nothing else. 
Even the little children had this characteristic in as 
perfect development as their grandmothers. 

The children, in truth, were the ill-omened blossoms 
from which another harvest of precisely such dark 
fruitage as I saw ripened around me was to be pro- 
duced. Of course you would imagine these to be 
lumps of crude iniquity, tiny vessels as full as they 
could hold of naughtiness ; nor can I say a great deal 
to the contrary. Small proof of parental discipline 
could I discern, save when a mother (drunken, I sin- 
cerely hope) snatched her own imp out of a group 
of pale, half-naked, humor-eaten abortions that were 
playing and squabbling together in the mud, turned up 
its tatters, brought down her heavy hand on its poor 
little tenderest part, and let it go again with a shake. 
If the child knew what the punishment was for, it was 
wiser than I pretend to be. It yelled and went back 
to its playmates in the mud. Yet let me bear testi- 

vol. vii. 22 



338 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

mony to what was beautiful, and more touching than 
anything that I ever witnessed before in the inter- 
course of happier children. I allude to the superin- 
tendence which some of these small people (too small, 
one would think, to be sent into the street alone, 
had there been any other nursery for them) exercised 
over still smaller ones. Whence they derived such a 
sense of duty, unless immediately from God, I cannot 
tell ; but it was wonderful to observe the expression 
of responsibility in their deportment, the anxious fidel- 
ity with which they discharged their unfit office, the 
tender patience with which they linked their less pliable 
impulses to the wayward footsteps of an infant, and 
let it guide them whithersoever it liked. In the hol- 
low-cheeked, large-eyed girl of ten, whom I saw giving 
a cheerless oversight to her baby - brother, I did not 
so much marvel at it. She had merely come a little 
earlier than usual to the perception of what was to 
be her business in life. But I admired the sickly- 
looking little boy, who did violence to his boyish na- 
ture by making himself the servant of his little sister, 
— she too small to walk, and he too small to take her 
in his arms, — and therefore working a kind of mir- 
acle to transport her from one dirt-heap to another. 
Beholding such works of love and duty, I took heart 
again, and deemed it not so impossible, after all, for 
these neglected children to find a path through the 
squalor and evil of their circumstances up to the gate 
of heaven. Perhaps there was this latent good in all 
of them, though generally they looked brutish, and dull 
even in their sports; there was little mirth among 
them, nor even a fully awakened spirit of blackguard 
ism. Yet sometimes, again, I saw, with surprise and 
a sense as if I had been asleep and dreaming, the 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 339 

bright, intelligent, merry face of a child whose dark 
eyes gleamed with vivacious expression through the 
dirt that incrusted its skin, like sunshine struggling 
through a very dusty window-pane. 

In these streets the belted and blue-coated police- 
man appears seldom in comparison with the frequency 
of his occurrence in more reputable thoroughfares. I 
used to think that the inhabitants would have ample 
time to murder one another, or any stranger, like my- 
self, who might violate the filthy sanctities of the 
place, before the law could bring up its lumbering as- 
sistance. Nevertheless, there is a supervision ; nor 
does the watchfulness of authority permit the populace 
to be tempted to any outbreak. Once, in a time of 
dearth, I noticed a ballad - singer going through the 
street hoarsely chanting some discordant strain in a 
provincial dialect, of which I could only make out 
that it addressed the sensibilities of the auditors on the 
score of starvation ; but by his side stalked the police- 
man, offering no interference, but watchful to hear 
what this rough minstrel said or sang, and silence him, 
if his effusion threatened to prove too soul-stirring. 
In my judgment, however, there is little or no danger 
of that kind : they starve patiently, sicken patiently, 
die patiently, not through resignation, but a diseased 
flaccidity of hope. If ever they should do mischief to 
those above them, it will probably be by the communi- 
cation of some destructive pestilence ; for, so the med- 
ical men affirm, they suffer all the ordinary diseases 
with a degree of virulence elsewhere unknown, and 
keep among themselves traditionary plagues that have 
long ceased to afflict more fortunate societies. Char- 
ity herself gathers her robe about her to avoid their 
contact. It weuld be a dire revenge, indeed, if they 



340 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

were to prove their claims to be reckoned of one blood 
and nature with the noblest and wealthiest by compel- 
ling them to inhale death through the diffusion of 
their own poverty-poisoned atmosphere. 

A true Englishman is a kind man at heart, but has 
an unconquerable dislike to poverty and beggary. 
Beggars have heretofore been so strange to an Ameri- 
can that he is apt to become their prey, being recog- 
nized through his national peculiarities, and beset by 
them in the streets. The English smile at him, and 
say that there are ample public arrangements for 
every pauper's possible need, that street charity pro- 
motes idleness and vice, and that yonder personifica- 
tion of misery on the pavement will lay up a good 
day's profit, besides supping more luxuriously than 
the dupe who gives him a shilling. By and by the 
stranger adopts their theQry and begins to practise 
upon it, much to his own temporary freedom from 
annoyance, but not entirely without moral detriment 
or sometimes a too late contrition. Years afterwards, 
it may be, his memory is still haunted by some vin- 
dictive wretch whose cheeks were pale and hunger- 
pinched, whose rags fluttered in the east-wind, whose 
right arm was paralyzed and his left leg shrivelled 
into a mere nerveless stick, but whom he passed by re- 
morselessly because an Englishman chose to say that 
the fellow's misery looked too perfect, was too artist- 
ically got up, to be genuine. Even allowing this to be 
true (as, a hundred chances to one, it was), it would 
still have been a clear case of economy to buy him off 
with a little loose silver, so that his lamentable figure 
should not limp at the heels of your conscience all 
over the world. To own the truth, I provided myself 
with several such imaginary persecutors in England, 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 341 

and recruited their number with at least one sickly- 
looking wretch whose acquaintance I first made at As- 
sisi, in Italy, and, taking a dislike to something sinis- 
ter in his aspect, permitted him to beg early and late, 
and ail day long, without getting a single baiocco. At 
my latest glimpse of him, the villain avenged himself, 
not by a volley of horrible curses as any other Italian 
beggar would, but by taking an expression so grief- 
stricken, want-wrung, hopeless, and withal resigned, 
that I could paint his lifelike portrait at this moment. 
Were I to go over the same ground again, I would lis- 
ten to no man's theories, but buy the little luxury of 
beneficence at a cheap rate, instead of doing myself a 
moral mischief by exuding a stony incrustation over 
whatever natural sensibility I might possess. 

On the other hand, there were some mendicants 
whose utmost efforts I even now felicitate myself on 
having withstood. Such was a phenomenon abridged 
of his lower half, who beset me for two or three years 
together, and, in spite of his deficiency of locomotive 
members, had some supernatural method of transport- 
ing himself (simultaneously, I believe) to all quarters 
of the city. He wore a sailor's jacket (possibly, be- 
cause skirts would have been a superfluity to his fig- 
ure), and had a remarkably broad-shouldered and mus- 
cular frame, surmounted by a large, fresh-colored face, 
which was full of power and intelligence. His dress 
and linen were the perfection of neatness. Once a 
day, at least, wherever I went, I suddenly became 
aware of this trunk of a man on the path before me, 
resting on his base, and looking as if he had just 
sprouted out of the pavement, and would sink into it 
again and reappear at some other spot the instant you 
left him behind. The expression of his eye was per- 



342 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

fectly respectful, but terribly fixed, holding jyar own 
as by fascination, never once winking, never wavering 
from its point-blank gaze right into your face, till you 
were completely beyond the range of his battery of 
one immense rifled cannon. This was his mode of 
soliciting alms ; and he reminded me of the old beg- 
gar who appealed so touchingly to the charitable sym- 
pathies of Gil Bias, taking aim at him from the road^ 
side with a long - barrelled musket. The intentness 
and directness of his silent appeal, his close and unre- 
lenting attack upon your individuality, respectful as 
it seemed, was the very flower of insolence ; or, if you 
give it a possibly truer interpretation, it was the ty- 
rannical effort of a man endowed with great natural 
force of character to constrain your reluctant will to 
his purpose. Apparently, he had staked his salva- 
tion upon the ultimate success of a daily struggle be- 
tween himself and me, the triumph of which would 
compel me to become a tributary to the hat that lay 
on the pavement beside him. Man or fiend, however, 
there was a stubbornness in his intended victim which 
this massive fragment of a mighty personality had not 
altogether reckoned upon, and by its aid I was enabled 
to pass him at my customary pace hundreds of times 
over, quietly meeting his terribly respectful eye, and 
allowing him the fair chance which I felt to be his 
due, to subjugate me, if he really had the strength for 
it. He never succeeded, but, on the other hand, never 
gave up the contest ; and should I ever walk those 
streets again, I am certain that the truncated tyrant 
will sprout up through the pavement and look me fix- 
edly in the eye, and perhaps get the victory. 

I should think all the more highly of myself, if I 
had shown equal heroism in resisting another class of 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 343 

beggarly depredators, who assailed me on my weaker 
side and won an easy spoil. Such was the sanctimo- 
nious clergyman, with his white cravat, who visited 
me with a subscription-paper, which he himself had 
drawn up, in a case of heart-rending distress ; — the 
respectable and ruined tradesman, going from door to 
door, shy and silent in his own person, but accompa- 
nied by a sympathizing friend, who bore testimony to 
his integrity, and stated the unavoidable misfortunes 
that had crushed him down ; — or the delicate and 
prettily dressed lady, who had been bred in affluence, 
but was suddenly thrown upon the perilous charities 
of the world by the death of an indulgent, but secretly 
insolvent father, or the commercial catastrophe and 
simultaneous suicide of the best of husbands : — of 
the gifted, but unsuccessful author, appealing to my 
fraternal sympathies, generously rejoicing in some 
small prosperities which he was kind enough to term 
my own triumphs in the field of letters, and claiming 
to have largely contributed to them by his unbought 
notices in the public journals. England is full of 
such people, and a hundred other varieties of peripa- 
tetic tricksters, higher than these, and lower, who act 
their parts tolerably well, but seldom with an abso- 
lutely illusive effect. I knew at once, raw Yankee as 
I was, that they were humbugs, almost without an ex- 
ception, — rats that nibble at the honest bread and 
cheese of the community, and grow fat by their petty 
pilferings, — yet often gave them what they asked, 
and privately owned myself a simpleton. There is a 
decorum which restrains you (unless you happen to be 
a police-constable) from breaking through a crust of 
plausible respectability, even when you are certain 
that there is a knave beneath it. 



344 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

After making myself as familiar as I decently could 
with the poor streets, I became curious to see what 
kind of a home was provided for the inhabitants at 
the public expense, fearing that it must needs be a 
most comfortless one, or else their choice (if choice it 
were) of so miserable a life outside was truly difficult 
to account for. Accordingly, I visited a great alms- 
house, and was glad to observe how unexceptionably 
all the parts of the establishment were carried on, and 
what an orderly life, full - fed, sufficiently reposeful, 
and undisturbed by the arbitrary exercise of author- 
ity, seemed to be led there. Possibly, indeed, it was 
that very orderliness, and the cruel necessity of being 
neat and clean, and even the comfort resulting from 
these and other Christian-like restraints and regula- 
tions, that constituted the principal grievance on the 
part of the poor, shiftless inmates, accustomed to a life- 
long luxury of dirt and harum-scarumness. The wild 
life of the streets has perhaps as unforgetable a charm, 
to those who have once thoroughly imbibed it, as the 
life of the forest or the prairie. But I conceive rather 
that there must be insuperable difficulties, for the ma- 
jority of the poor, in the way of getting admittance to 
the almshouse, than that a merely aesthetic preference 
for the street would incline the pauper class to fare 
scantily and precariously, and expose their raggedness 
to the rain and snow, when such a hospitable door 
stood wide open for their entrance. It might be that 
the roughest and darkest side of the matter was not 
shown me, there being persons of eminent station and 
of both sexes in the party which I accompanied ; and, 
of course, a properly trained public functionary would 
have deemed it a monstrous rudeness, as well as a 
great shame, to exhibit anything to people of rank 
that might too painfully shock their sensibilities. 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 345 

The women's ward was the portion of the establish- 
ment which we especially examined. It could not be 
questioned that they were treated with kindness as 
well as care. No doubt, as has been already sug- 
gested, some of them felt the irksomeness of submis- 
sion to general rules of orderly behavior, after being 
accustomed to that perfect freedom from the minor 
proprieties, at least, which is one of the compensations 
of absolutely hopeless poverty, or of any circumstances 
that set us fairly below the decencies of life. I asked 
the governor of the house whether he met with any 
difficulty in keeping peace and order among his in- 
mates ; and he informed me that his troubles among 
the women were incomparably greater than with the 
men. They were freakish, and apt to be quarrelsome, 
inclined to plague and pester one another in ways that 
it was impossible to lay hold of, and to thwart his 
own authority by the like intangible methods. He 
said this with the utmost good-nature, and quite won 
my regard by so placidly resigning himself to the in- 
evitable necessity of letting the women throw dust 
into his eyes. They certainly looked peaceable and 
sisterly enough as I saw them, though still it might be 
faintly perceptible that some of them were consciously 
playing their parts before the governor and his distin- 
guished visitors. 

This governor seemed to me a man thoroughly fit 
for his position. An American, in an office of similar 
responsibility, would doubtless be a much superior 
person, better educated, possessing a far wider range 
of thought, more naturally acute, with a quicker tact 
of external observation and a readier faculty of deal- 
ing with difficult cases. The women would not suc- 
ceed in throwing half so much dust into his eyes. 



346 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

Moreover, his black coat, and thin, sallow visage, 
would make him look like a scholar, and his manners 
would indefinitely approximate to those of a gentle- 
man. But I cannot help questioning whether, on the 
whole, these higher endowments would produce de- 
cidedly better results. The Englishman wass thor- 
oughly plebeian both in aspect and behavior, a bluff, 
ruddy -faced, hearty, kindly, yeoman -like personage, 
with no refinement whatever, nor any superfluous sen- 
sibility, but gifted with a native wholesomeness of 
character which must have been a very beneficial ele- 
ment in the atmosphere of the almshouse. He spoke 
to his pauper family in loud, good-humored, cheerful 
tones, and treated them with a healthy freedom that 
probably caused the forlorn wretches to feel as if they 
were free and healthy likewise. If he had under- 
stood them a little better, he would not have treated 
them half so wisely. We are apt to make sickly peo- 
ple more morbid, and unfortunate people more miser- 
able, by endeavoring to adapt our deportment to their 
especial and individual needs. They eagerly accept 
our well-meant efforts ; but it is like returning their 
own sick breath back upon themselves, to be breathed 
over and over again, intensifying the inward mischief 
at every reception. The sympathy that would really 
do them good is of a kind that recognizes their sound 
and healthy parts, and ignores the part affected by 
disease, which will thrive under the eye of a too close 
observer like a poisonous weed in the sunshine. My 
good friend the governor had no tendencies in the lat- 
ter direction, and abundance of them in the former, 
and was consequently as wholesome and invigorating 
as the west-wind with a little spice of the north in it, 
brightening the dreary visages that encountered us as 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 347 

if he had carried a sunbeam in his hand. He ex- 
pressed himself by his whole being and personality, 
and by works more than words, and had the not un- 
usual English merit of knowing what to do much bet- 
ter than how to talk about it. 

The women, I imagine, must have felt one imper 
fection in their state, however comfortable otherwise. 
They were forbidden, or, at all events, lacked the 
means, to follow out their natural instinct of adorning 
themselves ; all were well dressed in one homely uni- 
form of blue-checked gowns, with such caps upon their 
heads as English servants wear. Generally, too, they 
had one dowdy English aspect, and a vulgar type of 
features so nearly alike that they seemed literally to 
constitute a sisterhood. We have few of these abso- 
lutely unilluminated faces among our native American 
population, individuals of whom must be singularly 
unfortunate, if, mixing as we do, no drop of gentle 
blood has contributed to refine the turbid element, no 
gleam of hereditary intelligence has lighted up the 
stolid eyes, which their forefathers brought from the 
Old Country. Even in this English almshouse, how- 
ever, there was at least one person who claimed to be 
intimately connected with rank and wealth. The gov- 
ernor, after suggesting that this person would probably 
be gratified by our visit, ushered us into a small par- 
lor, which was furnished a little more like a room in a 
private dwelling than others that we entered, and had 
a row of religious books and fashionable novels on the 
mantel - piece. An old lady sat at a bright coal-fire, 
reading a romance, and rose to receive us with a cer- 
tain pomp of manner and elaborate display of cere- 
monious courtesy, which, in spite of myself, made me 
inwardly question the genuineness of her aristocratic 



348 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

pretensions. But, at any rate, she looked like a re- 
spectable old soul, and was evidently gladdened to the 
very core of her frost-bitten heart by the awful punc- 
tiliousness with which we responded to her gracious 
and hospitable, though unfamiliar welcome. After a 
little polite conversation, we retired ; and the governor, 
with a lowered voice and an air of deference, told us 
that she had been a lady of quality, and had ridden in 
her own equipage, not many years before, and now 
lived in continual expectation that some of her rich 
relatives would drive up in their carriages to take her 
away. Meanwhile, he added, she was treated with 
great respect by her fellow-paupers. I could not help 
thinking, from a few criticisable peculiarities in her 
talk and manner, that there might have been a mistake 
on the governor's part, and perhaps a venial exaggera- 
tion on the old lady's, concerning her former position 
in society; but what struck me was the forcible in- 
stance of that most prevalent of English vanities, the 
pretension to aristocratic connection, on one side, and 
the submission and reverence with which it was ac- 
cepted by the governor and his household, on the 
other. Among ourselves, I think, when wealth and 
eminent position have taken their departure, they sel- 
dom leave a pallid ghost behind them, — or, if it 
sometimes stalks abroad, few recognize it. 

We went into several other rooms, at the doors of 
which, pausing on the outside, we could hear the vol- 
ubility, and sometimes the wrangling, of the female 
inhabitants within, but invariably found silence and 
peace when we stepped over the threshold. The 
women were grouped together in their sitting-rooms, 
sometimes three or four, sometimes a larger number, 
classified by their spontaneous affinities, I suppose, 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 349 

and all busied, so far as I can remember, with the one 
occupation of knitting coarse yarn stockings. Hardly 
any of them, I am sorry to say, had a brisk or cheer- 
ful air, though it often stirred them up to a momen- 
tary vivacity to be accosted by the governor, and they 
seemed to like being noticed, however slightly, by the 
visitors. The happiest person whom I saw there (and 
running hastily through my experiences, I hardly rec- 
ollect to have seen a happier one in my life, if you 
take a careless flow of spirits as happiness) was an old 
woman that lay in bed among ten or twelve heavy- 
looking females, who plied their knitting-work round 
about her. She laughed, when we entered, and imme- 
diately began to talk to us, in a thin, little, spirited 
quaver, claiming to be more than a century old ; and 
the governor (in whatever way he happened to be cog- 
nizant of the fact) confirmed her age to be a hundred 
and four. Her jauntiness and cackling merriment 
were really wonderful. It was as if she had got 
through with all her actual business in life two or 
three generations ago, and now, freed from every re- 
sponsibility for herself or others, had only to keep up 
a mirthful state of mind till the short time, or long 
time (and, happy as she was, she appeared not to care 
whether it were long or short), before Death, who had 
misplaced her name in his list, might remember to 
take her away. She had gone quite round the circle 
"of human existence, and come back to the play-ground 
again. And so she had grown to be a kind of mi- 
raculous old pet, the plaything of people seventy or 
eighty years younger than herself, who talked and 
laughed with her as if she were a child, finding great 
delight in her wayward and strangely playful re- 
sponses, into some of which she cunningly conveyed 



350 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

a gibe that caused their ears to tingle a little. She 
had done getting out of bed in this world, and lay 
there to be waited upon like a queen or a baby. 

In the same room sat a pauper who had once been 
an actress of considerable repute, but was compelled 
to give up her profession by a softening of the brain. 
The disease seemed to have stolen the continuity out 
of her life, and disturbed all healthy relationship be- 
tween the thoughts within her and the world without. 
On our first entrance, she looked cheerfully at us, and 
showed herself ready to engage in conversation ; but 
suddenly, while we were talking with the century-old 
crone, the poor actress began to weep, contorting her 
face with extravagant stage - grimaces, and wringing 
her hands for some inscrutable sorrow. It might have 
been a reminiscence of actual calamity in her past life, 
or, quite as probably, it was but a dramatic woe, be- 
neath which she had staggered and shrieked and 
wrung her hands with hundreds of repetitions in the 
sight of crowded theatres, and been as often comforted 
by thunders of applause. But my idea of the mystery 
was, that she had a sense of wrong in seeing the aged 
woman (whose empty vivacity was like the rattling of 
dry peas in a bladder) chosen as the central object of 
interest to the visitors, while she herself, who had agi- 
tated thousands of hearts with a breath, sat starving 
for the admiration that was her natural food. I ap- 
peal to the whole society of artists of the Beautiful 
and the Imaginative, — poets, romancers, painters, 
sculptors, actors, — whether or no this is a grief that 
may be felt even amid the torpor of a dissolving 
brain ! 

We looked into a good many sleeping-chambers, 
where were rows of beds, mostly calculated for two oc- 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 351 

cupants, and provided with sheets and pillow-cases 
that resembled sackcloth. It appeared to me that the 
sense of beauty was insufficiently regarded in all the 
arrangements of the almshouse ; a little cheap luxury 
for the eye, at least, might do the poor folks a sub- 
stantial good. But, at all events, there was the beauty 
of perfect neatness and orderliness, which, being here- 
tofore known to few of them, was perhaps as much as 
they could well digest in the remnant of their lives. 
We were invited into the laundry, where a great 
washing and drying were in process, the whole atmos- 
phere being hot and vaporous with the steam of wet 
garments and bedclothes. This atmosphere was the 
pauper-life of the past week or fortnight resolved into 
a gaseous state, and breathing it, however fastidiously, 
we were forced to inhale the strange element into our 
inmost being. Had the Queen been there, I know not 
how she could have escaped the necessity. What an 
intimate brotherhood is this in which we dwell, do 
what we may to put an artificial remoteness between 
the high creature and the low one ! A poor man's 
breath, borne on the vehicle of tobacco-smoke, floats 
into a palace-window and reaches the nostrils of a 
monarch. It is but an example, obvious to the sense, 
of the innumerable and secret channels by which, at 
every moment of our lives, the flow and reflux of a 
common humanity pervade us all. How superficial 
are the niceties of such as pretend to keep aloof ! 
Let the whole world be cleansed, or not a man or 
woman of us all can be clean. 

By and by we came to the ward where the children 
were kept, on entering which, we saw, in the first 
place, several unlovely and unwholesome little people 
lazily playing together in a court-yard. And here a 



352 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

singular incommodity befell one member of our party. 
Among the children was a wretched, pale, half-torpid 
little thing (about six years old, perhaps, but I know 
not whether a girl or a boy), with a humor in its eyes 
and face, which the governor said was the scurvy, and 
which appeared to bedim its powers of vision, so that 
it toddled about gropingly, as if in quest of it did 
not precisely know what. This child — this sickly, 
wretched, humor-eaten infant, the offspring of un- 
speakable sin and sorrow, whom it must have required 
several generations of guilty progenitors to render so 
pitiable an object as we beheld it — immediately took 
an unaccountable fancy to the gentleman just hinted 
at. It prowled about him like a pet kitten, rubbing 
against his legs, following everywhere at his heels, 
pulling at his coat-tails, and, at last, exerting all the 
speed that its poor limbs were capable of, got directly 
before him and held forth its arms, mutely insisting 
on being taken up. It said not a word, being perhaps 
under-witted and incapable of prattle. But it smiled 
up in his face, — a sort of woful gleam was that smile, 
through the sickly blotches that covered its features, 
— and found means to express such a perfect confi- 
dence that it was going to be fondled and made much 
of, that there was no possibility in a human heart of 
balking its expectation. It was as if God had prom- 
ised the poor child this favor on behalf of that individ- 
ual, and he was bound to fulfil the contract, or else no 
longer call himself a man among men. Nevertheless, 
it could be no easy thing for him to do, he being a 
person burdened with more than an Englishman's cus- 
tomary reserve, shy of actual contact with human be* 
ings, afflicted with a peculiar distaste for whatever was 
ugly, and, furthermore, accustomed to that habit of 






GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 353 

observation from an insulated stand-point which is 
said (but, I hope, erroneously) to have the tendency 
of putting ice into the blood. 

So I watched the struggle in his mind with a good 
deal of interest, and am seriously of opinion that he 
did an heroic act, and effected more than he dreamed 
of towards his final salvation, when he took up the 
loathsome child and caressed it as tenderly as if he 
had been its father. To be sure, we all smiled at him, 
at the time, but doubtless would have acted pretty 
much the same in a similar stress of circumstances. 
The child, at any rate, appeared to be satisfied with 
his behavior ; for when he had held it a considerable 
time, and set it down, it still favored him with its 
company, keeping fast hold of his forefinger till we 
reached the confines of the place. And on our return 
through the court-yard, after visiting another part of 
the establishment, here again was this same little 
Wretchedness waiting for its victim, with a smile of 
joyful, and yet dull recognition about its scabby mouth 
and in its rheumy eyes. No doubt, the child's mission 
in reference to our friend was to remind him that he 
was responsible, in his degree, for all the sufferings 
and misdemeanors of the world in which he lived, and 
was not entitled to look upon a particle of its dark ca- 
lamity as if it were none of his concern : the offspring 
of a brother's iniquity being his own blood-relation, 
and the guilt, likewise, a burden on him, unless he ex- 
piated it by better deeds. 

All the children in this ward seemed to be invalids, 
and, going up stairs, we found more of them in the 
same or a worse condition than the little creature just 
described, with their mothers (or more probably other 
women, for the infants were mostly foundlings) in at- 

vol. vii. 23 



354 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

tendance as nurses. The matron of the ward, a mid- 
dle-aged woman, remarkably kind and motherly in as- 
pect, was walking to and fro across the chamber — 
on that weary journey in which careful mothers and 
nurses travel so continually and so far, and gain never 
a step of progress — with an unquiet baby in her 
arms. She assured us that she enjoyed her occupa- 
tion, being exceedingly fond of children ; and, in fact, 
the absence of timidity in all the little people was a 
sufficient proof that they could have had no experience 
of harsh treatment, though, on the other hand, none 
of them appeared to be attracted to one individual 
more than another. In this point they differed widely 
from the poor child below stairs. They seemed to rec- 
ognize a universal motherhood in womankind, and 
cared not which individual might be the mother of the 
moment. I found their tameness as shocking as did 
Alexander Selkirk that of the brute subjects of his else 
solitary kingdom. It was a sort of tame familiarity, 
a perfect indifference to the approach of strangers, 
such as I never noticed in other children. I accounted 
for it partly by their nerveless, unstrung state of body, 
incapable of the quick thrills of delight and fear which 
play upon the lively harp-strings of a healthy child's 
nature, and partly by their wof ul lack of acquaintance 
with a private home, and their being therefore desti- 
tute of the sweet home-bred shyness, which is like the 
sanctity of heaven about a mother-petted child. Their 
condition was like that of chickens hatched in an oven, 
and growing up without the especial guardianship of 
a matron hen : both the chicken and the child, me- 
thinks, must needs want something that is essential to 
their respective characters. 

In this chamber (which was spacious, containing a 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 355 

large number of beds) there was a clear fire burning 
on the hearth, as in all the other occupied rooms ; and 
directly in front of the blaze sat a woman holding a 
baby, which, beyond all reach of comparison, was the 
most horrible object that ever afflicted my sight. Days 
afterwards — nay, even now, when I bring it up viv= 
idly before my mind's eye — it seemed to lie upon the 
floor of my heart, polluting my moral being with the 
sense of something grievously amiss in the entire con- 
ditions of humanity. The holiest man could not be 
otherwise than full of wickedness, the chastest virgin 
seemed impure, in a world where such a babe was pos- 
sible. The governor whispered me, apart, that, like 
nearly all the rest of them, it was the child of un- 
healthy parents. Ah, yes ! There was the mischief. 
This spectral infant, a hideous mockery of the visible 
link which Love creates between man and woman, was 
born of disease and sin. Diseased Sin was its father, 
and Sinful Disease its mother, and their offspring lay 
in the woman's arms like a nursing Pestilence, which, 
could it live and grow up, would make the world a 
more accursed abode than ever heretofore. Thank 
Heaven, it could not live ! This baby, if we must give 
it that sweet name, seemed to be three or four months 
old, but, being such an unthrifty changeling, might 
have been considerably older. It was all covered with 
blotches, and preternaturally dark and discolored ; it 
was withered away, quite shrunken and fleshless ; it 
breathed only amid pantings and gaspings, and moaned 
painfully at every gasp. The only comfort in refer- 
ence to it was the evident impossibility of its surviv- 
ing to draw many more of those miserable, moaning 
6reaths ; and it would have been infinitely less heart- 
depressing to see it die, right before my eyes, than to 



356 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

depart and carry it alive in my remembrance, still suf- 
fering the incalculable torture of its little life. I can 
by no means express how horrible this infant was, 
neither ought I to attempt it. And yet I must add 
one final touch. Young as the poor little creature 
was, its pain and misery had endowed it with a pre- 
mature intelligence, insomuch that its eyes seemed to 
stare at the by-standers out of their sunken sockets 
knowingly and appealingly, as if summoning us one 
and all to witness the deadly wrong of its existence. 
At least, I so interpreted its look, when it positively 
met and responded to my own awe-stricken gaze, and 
therefore I lay the case, as far as I am able, before 
mankind, on whom God has imposed the necessity to 
suffer in soul and body till this dark and dreadful 
wrong be righted. 

Thence we went to the school-rooms, which were un- 
derneath the chapel. The pupils, like the children 
whom we had just seen, were, in large proportion, 
foundlings. Almost without exception, they looked 
sickly, with marks of eruptive trouble in their doltish 
faces, and a general tendency to diseases of the eye. 
Moreover, the poor little wretches appeared to be un- 
easy within their skins, and screwed themselves about 
on the benches in a disagreeably suggestive way, as if 
they had inherited the evil habits of their parents as 
an innermost garment of the same texture and mate- 
rial as the shirt of Nessus, and must wear it with un- 
speakable discomfort as long as they lived. I saw only 
a single child that looked healthy ; and on my point- 
ing him out, the governor informed me that this little 
boy, the sole exception to the miserable aspect of his 
school-fellows, was not a foundling, nor properly a 
work-house child, being born of respectable parentage, 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 357 

and his father one of the officers of the institution. 
As for the remainder, - — the hundred pale abortions 
to be counted against one rosy-cheeked boy, — what 
shall we say or do? Depressed by the sight of so 
much misery, and uninventive of remedies for the evils 
that force themselves on my perception, I can do little 
more than recur to the idea already hinted at in the 
early part of this article, regarding the speedy neces- 
sity of a new deluge. So far as these children are 
concerned, at any rate, it would be a blessing to the 
human race, which they will contribute to enervate 
and corrupt, — a greater blessing to themselves, who 
inherit no patrimony but disease and vice, and in 
whose souls, if there be a spark of # God's life, this 
seems the only possible mode of keeping it aglow, — 
if every one of them could be drowned to-night, by 
their best friends, instead of being put tenderly to bed. 
This heroic method of treating human maladies, moral 
and material, is certainly beyond the scope of man's 
discretionary rights, and probably will not be adopted 
by Divine Providence until the opportunity of milder 
reformation shall have been offered us again and 
again, through a series of future ages. 

It may be fair to acknowledge that the humane and 
excellent governor, as well as other persons better ac- 
quainted with the subject than myself, took a less 
gloomy view of it, though still so dark a one as to in- 
volve scanty consolation. They remarked that indi- 
viduals of the male sex, picked up in the streets and 
nurtured in the work-house, sometimes succeed toler- 
ably well in life, because they are taught trades before 
being turned into the world, and, by dint of immacu- 
late behavior and good luck, are not unlikely to get 
employment and earn a livelihood. The case is differ- 



358 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

ent with the girls. They can only go to service, and 
are invariably rejected by families of respectability 
on account of their origin, and for the better reason 
, of their unfitness to fill satisfactorily even the meanest 
situations in a well-ordered English household. Their 
resource is to take service with people only a step or 
two above the poorest class, with whom they fare scan- 
tily, endure harsh treatment, lead shifting and preca- 
rious lives, and finally drop into the slough of evil, 
through which, in their best estate, they do but pick 
their slimy way on stepping-stones. 

From the schools we went to the bake-house, and 
the brew-house (for such cruelty is not harbored in 
the heart of a true Englishman as to deny a pauper 
his daily allowance of beer), and through the kitchens, 
where we beheld an immense pot over the fire, surg- 
ing and walloping with some kind of a savory stew 
that filled it up to its brim. We also visited a tailor's 
shop, and a shoemaker's shop, in both of which a num- 
ber of men, and pale, diminutive apprentices, were at 
work, diligently enough, though seemingly with small 
heart in the business. Finally, the governor ushered 
us into a shed, inside of which was piled up an im- 
mense quantity of new coffins. They were of the 
plainest description, made of pine boards, probably 
of American growth, not very nicely smoothed by the 
plane, neither painted nor stained with black, but pro- 
vided with a loop of rope at either end for the conven- 
ience of lifting the rude box and its inmate into the 
cart that shall carry them to the burial-ground. There, 
in holes ten feet deep, the paupers are buried one 
above another, mingling their relics indistinguishably. 
In another world may they resume their individuality 
and find it a happier one than here ! 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 359 

As we departed, a character came under our notice 
which I have met with in all almshouses, whether of 
the city or village, or in England or America. It was 
the familiar simpleton, who shuffled across the court 
yard, clattering his wooden-soled shoes, to greet us 
with a howl or a laugh, I hardly know which, holding 
out his hand for a penny, and chuckling grossly when 
it was given him. All under-witted persons, so far as 
my experience goes, have this craving for copper coin, 
and appear to estimate its value by a miraculous in- 
stinct, which is one of the earliest gleams of human 
intelligence while the nobler faculties are yet in abey- 
ance. There may come a time, even in this world, 
when we shall all understand that our tendency to the 
individual appropriation of gold and broad acres, fine 
houses, and such good and beautiful things as are 
equally enjoyable by a multitude, is but a trait of im- 
perfectly developed intelligence, like the simpleton's 
cupidity of a penny. When that day dawns, — and 
probably not till then, — I imagine that there will be 
no more poor streets nor need of almshouses. 

I was once present at the wedding of some poor 
English people, and was deeply impressed by the spec- 
tacle, though by no means with such proud and de- 
lightful emotions as seem to have affected all Eng- 
land on the recent occasion of the marriage of its 
Prince. It was in the Cathedral at Manchester, a 
particularly black and grim old structure, into which 
I had stepped to examine some ancient and curious 
wood-carvings within the choir. The woman in attend- 
ance greeted me with a smile (which always glimmers 
forth on the feminine visage, I know not why, when 
a wedding is in question), and asked me to take a 
seat in the nave till some poor parties were married, 



360 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

it being the Easter holidays, and a good time for them 
to marry, because no fees would be demanded by the 
clergyman. I sat down accordingly, and soon the 
parson and his clerk appeared at the altar, and a con- 
siderable crowd of people made their entrance at a 
side-door, and ranged themselves in a long, huddled 
line across the chancel. They were my acquaintances 
of the poor streets, or persons in a precisely similar 
condition of life, and were now come to their marriage- 
ceremony in just such garbs as I had always seen them 
wear : the men in their loafer's coats, out at elbows, 
or their laborers' jackets, defaced with grimy toil ; the 
women drawing their shabby shawls tighter about 
their shoulders, to hide the raggedness beneath ; all 
of them unbrushed, unshaven, unwashed, uncombed, 
and wrinkled with penury and care ; nothing virgin- 
like in the brides, nor hopeful or energetic in the 
bridegrooms ; — they were, in short, . the mere rags 
and tatters of the human race, whom some east-wind 
of evil omen, howling along the streets, had chanced 
to sweep together into an unf ragrant heap. Each and 
all of them, conscious of his or her individual misery, 
had blundered into the strange miscalculation of sup- 
posing that they could lessen the sum of it by multi- 
plying it into the misery of another person. All the 
couples (and it was difficult, in such a confused crowd, 
to compute exactly their number) stood up at once, 
and had execution done upon them in the lump, the 
clergyman addressing only small parts of the service 
to each individual pair, but so managing the larger 
portion as to include the whole company without the 
trouble of repetition. By this compendious contrivance, 
one would apprehend, he came dangerously near mak- 
ing every man and woman the husband or wife of 



GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 361 

every other ; nor, perhaps, would he have perpetrated 
much additional mischief by the mistake ; but, after re- 
ceiving a benediction in common, they assorted them- 
selves in their own fashion, as they only knew how, 
and departed to the garrets, or the cellars, or the un- 
sheltered street-corners, where their honeymoon and 
subsequent lives were to be spent. The parson smiled 
decorously, the clerk and the sexton grinned broadly* 
the female attendant tittered almost aloud, and even 
the married parties seemed to see something exceed- 
ingly funny in the affair ; but for my part, though 
generally apt enough to be tickled by a joke, I laid 
it away in my memory as one of the saddest sights I 
ever looked upon. 

Not very long afterwards, I happened to be passing 
the same venerable Cathedral, and heard a clang of 
joyful bells, and beheld a bridal party coming down 
the steps towards a carriage and four horses, with a 
portly coachman and two postilions, that waited at the 
gate. One parson and one service had amalgamated 
the wretchedness of a score of paupers ; a Bishop and 
three or four clergymen had combined their spiritual 
might to forge the golden links of this other marriage- 
bond. The bridegroom's mien had a sort of careless 
and kindly English pride ; the bride floated along in 
her white drapery, a creature so nice and delicate 
that it was a luxury to see her, and a pity that her 
silk slippers should touch anything so grimy as the old 
stones of the churchyard avenue. The crowd of ragged 
people, who always cluster to witness what they may 
of an aristocratic wedding, broke into audible admira- 
tion of the bride's beauty and the bridegroom's man- 
liness, and uttered prayers and ejaculations (possibly 
paid for in alms) for the happiness of both. If the 



362 GLIMPSES OF ENGLISH POVERTY. 

most favorable of earthly conditions could make them 
happy, they had every prospect of it. They were go- 
ing to live on their abundance in one of those stately 
and delightful English homes, such as no other people 
ever created or inherited, a hall set far and safe within 
its own private grounds, and surrounded with vener- 
able trees, shaven lawns, rich shrubbery, and trimmest 
pathways, the whole so artfully contrived and tended 
that summer rendered it a paradise, and even winter 
would hardly disrobe it of its beauty ; and all this 
fair property seemed more exclusively and inalienably 
their own, because of its descent through many fore- 
fathers, each of whom had added an improvement or 
a charm, and thus transmitted it with a stronger 
stamp of rightful possession to his heir. And is it 
possible, after all, that there may be a flaw in the title- 
deeds ? Is, or is not, the system wrong that gives one 
married pair so immense a superfluity of luxurious 
home, and shuts out a million others from any home 
whatever ? One day or another, safe as they deem 
themselves, and safe as the hereditary temper of the 
people really tends to make them, the gentlemen of 
England will be compelled to face this question. 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 

It has often perplexed me to imagine how an Eng- 
lishman will be able to reconcile himself to any future 
state of existence from which the earthly institution of 
dinner shall be excluded. Even if he fail to take his 
appetite along with him (which it seems to me hardly 
possible to believe, since this endowment is so essential 
to his composition), the immortal day must still admit 
an interim of two or three hours during which he will 
be conscious of a slight distaste, at all events, if not 
an absolute repugnance, to merely spiritual nutriment. 
The idea of dinner has so imbedded itself among his 
highest and deepest characteristics, so illuminated it- 
self with intellect and softened itself with the kindest 
emotions of his heart, so linked itself with Church and 
State, and grown so majestic with long hereditary cus- 
toms and ceremonies, that, by taking it utterly away, 
Death, instead of putting the final touch to his per- 
fection, would leave him infinitely less complete than 
we have already known him. He could not be roundly 
happy. Paradise, among all its enjoyments, would 
lack one daily felicity which his sombre little island 
possessed. Perhaps it is not irreverent to conjecture 
that a provision may have been made, in this partic- 
ular, for the Englishman's exceptional necessities. It 
strikes me that Milton was of the opinion here sug- 
gested, and may have intended to throw out a delight- 
ful and consolatory hope for his countrymen, when he 
represents the genial archangel as playing his part 



864 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

with such excellent appetite at Adam's dinner-table, 
and confining himself to fruit and vegetables only be- 
cause, in those early days of her housekeeping, Eve 
had no more acceptable viands to set before him. 
Milton, indeed, had a true English taste for the pleas- 
ures of the table, though refined by the lofty and 
poetic discipline to which he had subjected himself. 
It is delicately implied in the refection in Paradise, 
and more substantially, though still elegantly, betrayed 
in the sonnet proposing to " Laurence, of virtuous fa- 
ther virtuous son," a series of nice little dinners in 
midwinter ; and it blazes fully out in that untasted 
banquet which, elaborate as it was, Satan tossed up in 
a trice from the kitchen-ranges of Tartarus. 

Among this people, indeed, so wise in their genera- 
tion, dinner has a kind of sanctity quite independent 
of the dishes that may be set upon the table ; so that, 
if it be only a mutton-chop, they treat it with due rev- 
erence, and are rewarded with a degree of enjoyment 
which such reckless devourers as ourselves do not 
often find in our richest abundance. It is good to see 
how stanch they are after fifty or sixty years of heroic 
eating, still relying upon their digestive powers and 
indulging a vigorous appetite ; whereas an American 
has generally lost the one and learned to distrust the 
other long before reaching the earliest decline of life ; 
and thenceforward he makes little account of his din- 
ner, and dines at his peril, if at all. I know not 
whether my countrymen will allow me to tell them, 
though I think it scarcely too much to affirm, that on 
this side of the water, people never dine. At any 
rate, abundantly as Nature has provided us with most 
of the material requisites, the highest possible dinner 
has never yet been eaten in America. It is the con- 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 365 

summate flower of civilization and refinement ; and 
our inability to produce it, or to appreciate its admi- 
rable beauty if a happy inspiration should bring it into 
bloom, marks fatally the limit of culture which we 
have attained. 

It is not to be supposed, however, that the mob of 
cultivated Englishmen know how to dine in this ele- 
vated sense. The unpolishable ruggedness of the 
national character is still an impediment to them, 
even in that particular line where they are best qual- 
ified to excel. Though often present at good men's 
feasts, I remember only a single dinner, which, while 
lamentably conscious that many of its higher excel- 
lences were thrown away upon me, I yet could feel to 
be a perfect work of art. It could not, without un- 
pardonable coarseness, be styled a matter of animal 
enjoyment, because, out of the very perfection of that 
lower bliss, there had arisen a dream-like development 
of spiritual happiness. As in the masterpieces of 
painting and poetry, there was a something intan- 
gible, a final deliciousness that only fluttered about 
your comprehension, vanishing whenever you tried to 
detain it, and compelling you to recognize it by faith 
rather than sense. It seemed as if a diviner set of 
senses were requisite, and had been partly supplied, 
for the special fruition of this banquet, and that the 
guests around the table (only eight in number) were 
becoming so educated, polished, and softened, by the 
delicate influences of what they ate and drank, as to 
be now a little more than mortal for the nonce. And 
there was that gentle, delicious sadness, too, which we 
find in the very summit of our most exquisite enjoy- 
ments, and feel it a charm beyond all the gayety 
through which it keeps breathing its undertone. In 



366 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

the present case, it was worth a heavier sigh to reflect 
that such a festal achievement ■ — the production of so 
much art, skill, fancy, invention, and perfect taste, — 
the growth of all the ages, which appeared to have 
been ripening for this hour, since man first began to 
eat and to moisten his food with wine — must lavish 
its happiness upon so brief a moment, when other 
beautiful things can be made a joy forever. Yet a 
dinner like this is no better than we can get, any day, 
at the rejuvenescent Cornhill Coffee-House, unless the 
whole man, with soul, intellect, and stomach, is ready 
to appreciate it, and unless, moreover, there is such a 
harmony in all the circumstances and accompaniments, 
and especially such a pitch of well-according minds, 
that nothing shall jar rudely against the guest's thor- 
oughly awakened sensibilities. The world, and espe- 
cially our part of it, being the rough, ill-assorted, and 
tumultuous place we find it, a beefsteak is about as 
good as any other dinner. 

The foregoing reminiscence, however, has drawn me 
aside from the main object of my sketch, in which 
I purposed to give a slight idea of those public, or 
partially public banquets, the custom of which so 
thoroughly prevails among the English people, that 
nothing is ever decided upon, in matters of peace and 
war, until they have chewed upon it in the shape of 
roast-beef, and talked it fully over in their cups. Nor 
are these festivities merely occasional, but of stated 
recurrence in all considerable municipalities and as- 
sociated bodies. The most ancient times appear to 
have been as familiar with them as the Englishmen 
of to-day. In many of the old English towns, you 
find some stately Gothic hall or chamber in which the 
Mayor and other authorities of the place have long 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 367 

held their sessions ; and always, in convenient conti- 
guity, there is a dusky kitchen, with an immense fire- 
place where an ox might lie roasting at his ease, though 
the less gigantic scale of modern cookery may now have 
permitted the cobwebs to gather in its chimney. St. 
Mary's Hall, in Coventry, is so good a specimen of an 
ancient banqueting-room, that perhaps I may profita- 
bly devote a page or two to the description of it. 

In a narrow street, opposite to St. Michael's Church, 
one of the three famous spires of Coventry, you behold 
a mediaeval edifice, in the basement of which is such a 
venerable and now deserted kitchen as I have above 
alluded to, and, on the same level, a cellar, with low 
stone pillars and intersecting arches, like the crypt of 
a cathedral. Passing up a well-worn staircase, the 
oaken balustrade of which is as black as ebony, you 
enter the fine old hall, some sixty feet in length, and 
broad and lofty in proportion. It is lighted by six 
windows of modern stained glass, on one side, and by 
the immense and magnificent arch of another window 
at the farther end of the room, its rich and ancient 
panes constituting a genuine historical piece, in which 
are represented some of the kingly personages of old 
times, with their heraldic blazonries. Notwithstand- 
ing the colored light thus thrown into the hall, and 
though it was noonday when I last saw it, the panel- 
ling of black-oak, and some faded tapestry that hung 
round the walls, together with the cloudy vault of the 
roof above, made a gloom, which the richness only 
illuminated into more appreciable effect. The tap- 
estry is wrought with figures in the dress of Henry 
VI. 's time (which is the date of the hall), and is re- 
garded by antiquaries as authentic evidence both for 
the costume of that epoch, and, I believe, for the act- 



368 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

ual portraiture of men known in history. They are 
as colorless as ghosts, however, and vanish drearily 
into the old stitch-work of their substance when you 
try to make them out. Coats of arms were formerly 
emblazoned all round the hall, but have been almost 
rubbed out by people hanging their overcoats against 
them, or by women with dishclouts and scrubbing- 
brushes, obliterating hereditary glories in their blind 
hostility to dust and spiders' webs. Full-length por- 
traits of several English kings, Charles II. being the 
earliest, hang on the walls ; and on the dais, or ele- 
vated part of the floor, stands an antique chair of 
state, which several royal characters are traditionally 
said to have occupied while feasting here with their 
loyal subjects of Coventry. It is roomy enough for a 
person of kingly bulk, or even two such, but angular 
and uncomfortable, reminding me of the oaken settles 
which used to be seen in old-fashioned New England 
kitchens. 

Overhead, supported by a self-sustaining power, 
without the aid of a single pillar, is the original ceil- 
ing of oak, precisely similar in shape to the roof of a 
barn, with all the beams and rafters plainly to be seen. 
At the remote height of sixty feet, you hardly discern 
that they are carved with figures of angels, and doubt- 
less many other devices, of which the admirable Gothic 
art is wasted in the duskiness that has so long been 
brooding there. Over the entrance of the hall, oppo- 
site the great arched window, the party-colored radi- 
ance of which glimmers faintly through the interval, 
is a gallery for minstrels ; and a row of ancient suits 
of armor is suspended from its balustrade. It im- 
presses me, too (for, having gone so far, I would fain 
leave nothing untouched upon), that I remember, 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 369 

somewhere about these venerable precincts, a picture 
of the Countess Godiva on horseback, in which the 
artist has been so niggardly of that illustrious lady's 
hair, that, if she had no ampler garniture, there was 
certainly much need for the good people of Coventry 
to shut their eyes. After all my pains, I fear that I 
have made but a poor hand at the description, as re- 
gards a transference of the scene from my own mind 
to the reader's. It gave me a most vivid idea of an- 
tiquity that had been very little tampered with ; inso- 
much that, if a group of steel-clad knights had come 
clanking through the doorway, and a bearded and 
beruffed old figure had handed in a stately dame, 
rustling in gorgeous robes of a long-forgotten fashion, 
unveiling a face of beauty somewhat tarnished in the 
mouldy tomb, yet stepping majestically to the trill of 
harp and viol from the minstrels' gallery, while the 
rusty armor responded with a hollow ringing sound 
beneath, — why, I should have felt that these shadows, 
once so familiar with the spot, had a better right in 
St. Mary's Hall than I, a stranger from a far country 
which has no Past. But the moral of the foregoing 
description is to show how tenaciously this love of 
pompous dinners, this reverence for dinner as a sacred 
institution, has caught hold of the English character; 
since, from the earliest recognizable period, we find 
them building their civic banqueting-halls as magnifi- 
cently as their palaces or cathedrals. 

I know not whether the hall just described is now 
used for festive purposes, but others of similar antiq- 
uity and splendor still are. For example, there is 
Barber-Surgeons' Hall, in London, a very fine old 
room, adorned with admirably carved wood-work on 
the ceiling and walls. It is also enriched with Hol- 

vol. vii. 24 



370 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

bein's masterpiece, representing a grave assemblage of 
barbers and surgeons, all portraits (with such exten- 
sive beards that methinks one half of the company 
might have been profitably occupied in trimming the 
other), kneeling before King Henry VIII. Sir Rob- 
ert Peel is said to have offered a thousand pounds for 
the liberty of cutting out one of the heads from this 
picture, he conditioning to have a perfect facsimile 
painted in. The room has many other pictures of dis- 
tinguished members of the company in long-past times, 
and of some of the monarchs and statesmen of Eng- 
land, all darkened with age, but darkened into such 
ripe magnificence as only age could bestow. It is not 
my design to inflict any more specimens of ancient 
hall-painting on the reader ; but it may be worth while 
to touch upon other modes of stateliness that still sur- 
vive in these time-honored civic feasts, where there 
appears to be a singular assumption of dignity and 
solemn pomp by respectable citizens who would never 
dream of claiming any privilege of rank outside of 
their own sphere. Thus, I saw two caps of state for 
the warden and junior warden of the company, caps 
of silver (real coronets or crowns, indeed, for these 
city-grandees) wrought in open-work and lined with 
crimson velvet. In a strong-closet, opening from the 
hall, there was a great deal of rich plate to furnish 
forth the banquet-table, comprising hundreds of forks 
and spoons, a vast silver punch-bowl, the gift of some 
jolly king or other, and, besides a multitude cf less 
noticeable vessels, two loving-cups, very elaborately 
wrought in silver gilt, one presented by Henry VIII., 
the other by Charles II. These cups, including the 
covers and pedestals, are very large and weighty, al- 
though the bowl-part would hardly contain more than 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 371 

half a pint of wine, which, when the custom was first 
established, each guest was probably expected to drink 
off at a draught. In passing them from hand to hand 
adown a long table of compotators, there is a peculiar 
ceremony which I may hereafter have occasion to de- 
scribe. Meanwhile, if I might assume such a liberty. 
I should be glad to invite the reader to the official 
dinner-table of his Worship, the Mayor, at a large 
English seaport where I spent several years. 

The Mayor's dinner-parties occur as often as once a 
fortnight, and, inviting his guests by fifty or sixty at 
a time, his Worship probably assembles at his board 
most of the eminent citizens and distinguished person- 
ages of the town and neighborhood more than once 
during his year's incumbency, and very much, no 
doubt, to the promotion of good feeling among indi- 
viduals of opposite parties and diverse pursuits in life. 
A miscellaneous party of Englishmen can always find 
more comfortable ground to meet upon than as many 
Americans, their differences of opinion being incom- 
parably less radical than ours, and it being the sincer- 
est wish of all their hearts, whether they call them- 
selves Liberals or what not, that nothing in this world 
shall ever be greatly altered from what it has been 
and is. Thus there is seldom such a virulence of 
political hostility that it may not be dissolved in a 
glass or two of wine, without making the good liquor 
any more dry or bitter than accords with English 
taste. 

The first dinner of this kind at which I had the 
honor to be present took place during assize-time, and 
included among the guests the judges and the promi- 
nent members of the bar. Reaching the Town Hall 
at seven o'clock, I communicated my name to one of 



372 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

several splendidly dressed footmen, and he repeated it 
to another on the first staircase, by whom it was passed 
to a third, and thence to a fourth at the door of the 
reception-room, losing all resemblance to the original 
sound in the course of these transmissions ; so that 1 
had the advantage of making my entrance in the char- 
acter of a stranger, not only to the whole company, 
but to myself as well. His Worship, however, kindly 
recognized me, and put me on speaking-terms with 
two or three gentlemen, whom I found very affable, 
and all the more hospitably attentive on the score of 
my nationality. It is very singular how kind an Eng- 
lishman will almost invariably be to an individual 
American, without ever bating a jot of his prejudice 
against the American character in the lump. My 
new acquaintances took evident pains to put me at my 
ease ; and, in requital of their good-nature, I soon be- 
gan to look round at the general company in a critical 
spirit, making my crude observations apart, and draw- 
ing silent inferences, of the correctness of which I 
should not have been half so well satisfied a year 
afterwards as at that moment. 

There were two judges present, a good many law- 
yers, and a few officers of the army in uniform. The 
other guests seemed to be principally of the mercan- 
tile class, and among them was a ship-owner from 
Nova Scotia, with whom I coalesced a little, inasmuch 
as we were born with the same sky over our heads, 
and an unbroken continuity of soil between his abode 
and mine. There was one old gentleman, whose char- 
acter I never made out, with powdered hair, clad in 
black breeches and silk stockings, and wearing a ra- 
pier at his side ; otherwise, with the exception of the 
military uniforms, there was little or no pretence of 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 373 

official costume. It being the first considerable as- 
semblage of Englishmen that I had seen, my honest 
impression about them was, that they were a heavy 
and homely set of people, with a remarkable rough- 
ness of aspect and behavior, not repulsive, but beneath 
which it required more familiarity with the national 
character than I then possessed always to detect the 
good breeding of a gentleman. Being generally mid- 
dle-aged, or still further advanced, they were by no 
means graceful in figure ; for the comeliness of the 
youthful Englishman rapidly diminishes with years, 
his body appearing to grow longer, his legs to abbre- 
viate themselves, and his stomach to assume the digni- 
fied prominence which justly belongs to that metrop- 
olis of his system. His face (what with the acridity 
of the atmosphere, ale at lunch, wine at dinner, and a 
well-digested abundance of succulent food) gets red 
and mottled, and develops at least one additional chin, 
with a promise of more ; so that, finally, a stranger 
recognizes his animal part at the most superficial 
glance, but must take time and a little pains to dis- 
cover the intellectual. Comparing him with an Amer- 
ican, I really thought that our national paleness and 
lean habit of flesh gave us greatly the advantage in 
an aesthetic point of view. It seemed to me, more- 
over, that the English tailor had not done so much as 
he might and ought for these heavy figures, but had 
gone on wilfully exaggerating their uncouthness by 
the roominess of their garments ; he had evidently no 
idea of accuracy of fit, and smartness was entirely out 
jf his line. But, to be quite open with the reader, I 
afterwards learned to think tnat this aforesaid tailor 
has a deeper art than his brethren among ourselves, 
knowing how to dress his customers with such individ- 



374 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

ual propriety that they look as if they were born in 
their clothes, the fit being to the character rather than 
the form. If you make an Englishman smart (unless 
he be a very exceptional one, of whom I have seen 
a few), you make him a monster ; his best aspect is 
that of ponderous respectability. 

To make an end of these first impressions, I fancied 
that not merely the Suffolk bar, but the bar of any 
inland county in New England, might show a set of 
thin-visaged men looking wretchedly worn, sallow, 
deeply wrinkled across the forehead, and grimly fur- 
rowed about the mouth, with whom these heavy- 
cheeked English lawyers, slow-paced and fat-witted as 
they must needs be, would stand very little chance in a 
professional contest. How that matter might turn out, 
I am unqualified to decide. But I state these results 
of my earliest glimpses at Englishmen, not for what 
they are worth, but because I ultimately gave them up 
as worth little or nothing. In course of time, I came 
to the conclusion that Englishmen of all ages are a 
rather good-looking people, dress in admirable taste 
from their own point of view, and, under a surface 
never silken to the touch, have a refinement of man- 
ners too thorough and genuine to be thought of as a 
separate endowment, — that is to say, if the individual 
himself be a man of station, and has had gentlemen 
for his father and grandfather. The sturdy Anglo- 
Saxon nature does not refine itself short of the third 
generation. The tradesmen, too, and all other classes, 
have their own proprieties. The only value of my crit- 
icisms, therefore, lay in their exemplifying the prone- 
ness of a traveller to measure one people by the dis- 
tinctive characteristics of another, — as English writ- 
ers invariably measure us, and take upon themselves 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 375 

to be disgusted accordingly, instead of trying to find 
out some principle of beauty with which we may be 
in conformity. 

In due time we were summoned to the table, and 
went thither in no solemn procession, but with a good 
deal of jostling, thrusting behind, and scrambling for 
places when we reached our destination. The legal 
gentlemen, I suspect, were responsible for this indeco- 
rous zeal, which I never afterwards remarked in a 
similar party. The dining-hall was of noble size, and, 
like the other rooms of the suite, was gorgeously 
painted and gilded and brilliantly illuminated. There 
was a splendid table-service, and a noble array of foot- 
men, some of them in plain clothes, and others wear- 
ing the town-livery, richly decorated with gold-lace, 
and themselves excellent specimens of the blooming 
young manhood of Britain. When we were fairly 
seated, it was certainly an agreeable spectacle to look 
up and down the long vista of earnest faces, and be- 
hold them so resolute, so conscious that there was an 
important business in hand, and so determined to be 
equal to the occasion. Indeed, Englishman or not, I 
hardly know what can be prettier than a snow-white 
table-cloth, a huge heap of flowers as a central decora- 
tion, bright silver, rich china, crystal glasses, decan- 
ters of Sherry at due intervals, a French roll and an 
artistically folded napkin at each plate, all that airy 
portion of a banquet, in short, that comes before the 
first mouthful, the whole illuminated by a blaze of ar- 
tificial light, without which a dinner of made-dishes 
looks spectral, and the simplest viands are the best. 
Printed bills-of-fare were distributed, representing an 
abundant feast, no part of which appeared on the ta- 
ble until called for in separate plates. I have entirely 



876 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

forgotten what it was, but deem it no great matter, 
inasmuch as there is a pervading commonplace and 
identicalness in the composition of extensive dinners, 
on account of the impossibility of supplying a hun- 
dred guests with anything particularly delicate or rare. 
It was suggested to me that certain juicy old gentle- 
men had a private understanding what to call for, and 
that it would be good policy in a stranger to follow in 
their footsteps through the feast. I did not care to 
do so, however, because, like Sancho Panza's dip out 
of Camaeho's caldron, any sort of potluck at such a 
table would be sure to suit my purpose ; so I chose a 
dish or two on my own judgment, and, getting through 
my labors betimes, had great pleasure in seeing the 
Englishmen toil onward to the end. 

They drank rather copiously, too, though wisely; 
for I observed that they seldom took Hock, and let 
the Champagne bubble slowly away out of the goblet, 
solacing themselves with Sherry, but tasting it warily 
before bestowing their final confidence. Their taste 
in wines, however, did not seem so exquisite, and cer- 
tainly was not so various, as that to which many 
Americans pretend. This foppery of an intimate ac- 
quaintance with rare vintages does not suit a sensible 
Englishman, as he is very much in earnest about his 
wines, and adopts one or two as his lifelong friends, 
seldom exchanging them for any Delilahs of a mo- 
ment, and reaping the reward of his constancy in an 
unimpaired stomach, and only so much gout as he 
deems wholesome and desirable. Knowing well the 
measure of his powers, he is not apt to fill his glass 
too often. Society, indeed, would hardly tolerate ha- 
bitual imprudences of that kind, though, in my opin- 
ion, the Englishmen now upon the stage could carry 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 377 

off their three bottles, at need, with as steady a gait as 
any of their forefathers. It is not so very long since 
the three-bottle heroes sank finally under the table. 
It may be (at least, I should be glad if it were true) 
that there was an occult sympathy between our tem- 
perance reform, now somewhat in abeyance, and the 
almost simultaneous disappearance of hard-drinking 
among the respectable classes in England. I remem- 
ber a middle-aged gentleman telling me (in illustra- 
tion of the very slight importance attached to breaches 
of temperance within the memory of men not yet old) 
that he had seen a certain magistrate, Sir John Link- 
water, or Drinkwater, — but I think the jolly old 
knight could hardly have staggered under so perverse 
a misnomer as this last, — while sitting on the magis- 
terial bench, pull out a crown-piece and hand it to the 
clerk. " Mr. Clerk," said Sir John, as if it were the 
most indifferent fact in the world, " I was drunk last 
night. There are my five shillings." 

During the dinner, I had a good deal of pleasant 
conversation with the gentlemen on either side of me. 
One of them, a lawyer, expatiated with great unction 
on the social standing of the judges. Representing 
the dignity and authority of the Crown, they take pre- 
cedence, during assize -time, of the highest military 
men in the kingdom, of the Lord Lieutenant of the 
county, of the Archbishops, of the royal Dukes, and 
even of the Prince of Wales. For the nonce, they 
are the greatest men in England. With a glow of 
professional complacency that amounted to enthusi- 
asm, my friend assured me, that, in case of a royal 
dinner, a judge, if actually holding an assize, would 
be expected to offer his arm and take the Queen her- 
self to the table. Happening to be in company with 



378 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

some of these elevated personages, on subsequent occa- 
sions, it appeared to me that the judges are fully con- 
scious of their paramount claims to respect, and take 
rather more pains to impress them on their ceremonial 
inferiors than men of high hereditary rank are apt to 
do. Bishops, if it be not irreverent to say so, are 
sometimes marked by a similar characteristic. Dig- 
nified position is so sweet to an Englishman, that he 
needs to be born in it, and to feel it thoroughly incor- 
porated with his nature from its original germ, in or- 
der to keep him from flaunting it obtrusively in the 
faces of innocent by-standers. 

My companion on the other side was a thick-set, 
middle-aged man, uncouth in manners, and ugly where 
none were handsome, with a dark, roughly hewn vis- 
age, that looked grim in repose, and seemed to hold 
within itself the machinery of a very terrific frown. 
He ate with resolute appetite, and let slip few oppor- 
tunities of imbibing whatever liquids happened to be 
passing by. I was meditating in what way this grisly 
featured table-fellow might most safely be accosted, 
when he turned to me with a surly sort of kindness, 
and invited me to take a glass of wine. We then be- 
gan a conversation that abounded, on his part, with 
sturdy sense, and, somehow or other, brought me 
closer to him than I had yet stood to an Englishman. 
I should hardly have taken him to be an educated 
man, certainly not a scholar of accurate training ; and 
yet he seemed to have all the resources of education 
and trained intellectual power at command. My fresh 
Americanism, and watchful observation of English 
characteristics, appeared either to interest or amuse 
him, or perhaps both. Under the mollifying influ- 
ences of abundance of meat and drink, he grew very 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 379 

gracious (not that I ought to use such a phrase to 
describe his evidently genuine good- will), and by and 
by expressed a wish for further acquaintance, asking 
me to call at his rooms in London and inquire for 
Sergeant Wilkins, — throwing out the name forcibly, 
as if he had no occasion to be ashamed of it. 1 
remembered Dean Swift's retort to Sergeant Bet- 
tesworth on a similar announcement, — " Of what 
regiment, pray, sir ? " — and fancied that the same 
question might not have been quite amiss, if applied 
to the rugged individual at my side. But I heard of 
him subsequently as one of the prominent men at the 
English bar, a rough customer, and a terribly strong 
champion in criminal cases ; and it caused me more 
regret than might have been expected, on so slight an 
acquaintanceship, when, not long afterwards, I saw 
his death announced in the newspapers. Not rich in 
attractive qualities, he possessed, I think, the most 
attractive one of all, — thorough manhood. 

After the cloth was removed, a goodly group of de- 
canters were set before the Mayor, who sent them 
forth on their outward voyage, full freighted with 
Port, Sherry, Madeira, and Claret, of which excellent 
liquors, methought, the latter found least acceptance 
among the guests. When every man had filled his 
glass, his Worship stood up and proposed a toast. It 
was, of course, " Our gracious Sovereign," or words to 
that effect; and immediately a band of musicians, 
whose preliminary tootings and thrummings I had 
already heard behind me, struck up " God save the 
Queen ! " and the whole company rose with one im- 
pulse to assist in singing that famous national anthem. 
It was the first time in my life that I had ever seen a 
body of men, or even a single man, under the active 



380 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

influence of the sentiment of Loyalty ; for, though we 
call ourselves loyal to our country and institutions, 
and prove it by our readiness to shed blood and sac- 
rifice life in their behalf, still the principle is as cold 
and hard, in an American bosom, as the steel spring 
that puts in motion a powerful machinery. In the 
Englishman's system, a force similar to that of our 
steel spring is generated by the warm throbbings of 
human hearts. He clothes our bare abstraction in 
flesh and blood, — at present, in the flesh and blood 
of a woman, — and manages to combine love, awe, 
and intellectual reverence, all in one emotion, and to 
embody his mother, his wife, his children, the whole 
idea of kindred, in a single person, and make her the 
representative of his country and its laws. We Amer- 
icans smile superior, as I did at the Mayor's table; 
and yet, I fancy, we lose some very agreeable titilla- 
tions of the heart in consequence of our proud prerog- 
ative of caring no more about our President than for 
a man of straw, or a stuffed scarecrow straddling in 
a cornfield. 

But, to say the truth, the spectacle struck me 
rather ludicrously, to see this party of stout middle- 
aged and elderly gentlemen, in the fulness of meat 
and drink, their ample and ruddy faces glistening 
with wine, perspiration, and enthusiasm, rumbling out 
those strange old stanzas from the very bottom of 
their hearts and stomachs, which two organs, in the 
English interior arrangement, lie closer together than 
in ours. The song seemed to me the rudest old ditty 
in the world ; but I could not wonder at its universal 
acceptance and indestructible popularity, considering 
how inimitably it expresses the national faith and feel- 
ing as regards the inevitable righteousness of Eng. 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 381 

land, the Almighty's consequent respect and partial- 
ity for that redoubtable little island, and his presumed 
readiness to strengthen its defence against the con- 
tumacious wickedness and knavery of all other princi- 
palities or republics. Tennyson himself, though evi- 
dently English to the very last prejudice, could not 
write half so good a song for the purpose. Finding 
that the entire dinner-table struck in, with voices of 
every pitch between rolling thunder and the squeak of 
a cart-wheel, and that the strain was not of such deli- 
cacy as to be much hurt by the harshest of them, I 
determined to lend my own assistance in swelling the 
triumphant roar. It seemed but a proper courtesy to 
the first Lady in the land, whose guest, in the largest 
sense, I might consider myself. Accordingly, my first 
tuneful efforts (and probably my last, for I purpose 
not to sing any more, unless it be " Hail Columbia " 
on the restoration of the Union) were poured freely 
forth in honor of Queen Victoria. The Sergeant 
smiled like the carved head of a Swiss nutcracker, 
and the other gentlemen in my neighborhood, by nods 
and gestures, evinced grave approbation of so suitable 
a tribute to English superiority ; and we finished oar 
stave and sat down in an extremely happy frame of 
mind. 

Other toasts followed in honor of the great institu- 
tions and interests of the country, and speeches in re- 
sponse to each were made by individuals whom the 
Mayor designated or the company called for. None 
of them impressed me with a very high idea of Eng- 
lish postprandial oratory. It is inconceivable, indeed, 
what ragged and shapeless utterances most English- 
men are satisfied to give vent to, without attempting 
anything like artistic shape, but clapping on a patch 



382 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

here and another there, and ultimately getting out 
what they want to say, and generally with a result of 
sufficiently good sense, but in some such disorganized 
mass as if they had thrown it up rather than spoken 
it. It seemed to me that this was almost as much 
by choice as necessity. An Englishman, ambitious of 
public favor, should not be too smooth. If an orator 
is glib, his countrymen distrust him. They dislike 
smartness. The stronger and heavier his thoughts, 
the better, provided there be an element of common- 
place running through them ; and any rough, yet 
never vulgar force of expression, such as would knock 
an opponent down if it hit him, only it must not be 
too personal, is altogether to their taste ; but a studied 
neatness of language, or other such superficial graces, 
they cannot abide. They do not often permit a man 
to make himself a fine orator of malice aforethought, 
that is, unless he be a nobleman (as, for example, 
Lord Stanley, of the Derby family), who, as an hered- 
itary legislator and necessarily a public speaker, is 
bound to remedy a poor natural delivery in the best 
way he can. On the whole, I partly agree with them, 
and, if I cared for any oratory whatever, should be as 
likely to applaud theirs as our own. When an Eng- 
lish speaker sits down, you feel that you have been 
listening to a real man, and not to an actor ; his senti- 
ments have a wholesome earth-smell in them, though, 
very likely, this apparent naturalness is as much an 
art as what we expend in rounding a sentence or elab- 
orating a peroration. 

It is one good effect of this inartificial style, that 
nobody in England seems to feel any shyness about 
shovelling the untrimmed and untrimmable ideas out 
of his mind for the benefit of an audience. At least, 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 383 

nobody did on the occasion now in hand, except a 
poor little Major of Artillery, who responded for the 
Army in a thin, quavering voice, with a terribly hesi- 
tating trickle of fragmentary ideas, and, I question 
not, would rather have been bayoneted in front of his 
batteries than to have said a word. Not his own 
mouth, but the cannon's, was this poor Major's proper 
organ of utterance. 

While I was thus amiably occupied in criticising my 
fellow-guests, the Mayor had got up to propose another 
toast; and listening rather inattentively to the first 
sentence or two, I soon became sensible of a drift in 
his Worship's remarks that made me glance apprehen- 
sively towards Sergeant Wilkins. " Yes," grumbled 
that gruff personage, shoving a decanter of Port to- 
wards me, " it is your turn next " ; and seeing in my 
face, I suppose, the consternation of a wholly unprac- 
tised orator, he kindly added, " It is nothing. A 
mere acknowledgment will answer the purpose. The 
less you say, the better they will like it." That being 
the case, I suggested that perhaps they would like it 
best if I said nothing at all. But the Sergeant shook 
his head. Now, on first receiving the Mayor's invita- 
tion to dinner, it had occurred to me that I might pos- 
sibly be brought into my present predicament ; but 1 
had dismissed the idea from my mind as too disagree- 
able to be entertained, and, moreover, as so alien from 
my disposition and character that Fate surely could 
not keep such a misfortune in store for me. If noth- 
ing else prevented, an earthquake or the crack of doom 
would certainly interfere before 1 need rise to speak. 
Yet here was the Mayor getting on inexorably, — and, 
indeed, I heartily wished that he might get on and on 
forever, and of his wordy wanderings find no end. 



384 CIVIC BANQUETS. _ 

If the gentle reader, my kindest friend and closest 
confidant, deigns to desire it, I can impart to him my 
own experience as a public speaker quite as indiffer- 
ently as if it concerned another person. Indeed, it 
does concern another, or a mere spectral phenomenon, 
for it was not I, in my proper and natural self, that 
sat there at table or subsequently rose to speak. At 
the moment, then, if the choice had been offered me 
whether the Mayor should let off a speech at my head 
or a pistol, I should unhesitatingly have taken the lat- 
ter alternative. I had really nothing to say, not an 
idea in my head, nor, which was a great deal worse, 
any flowing words or embroidered sentences in which 
to dress out that empty Nothing, and give it a cunning 
aspect of intelligence, such as might last the poor va- 
cuity the little time it had to live. But time pressed ; 
the Mayor brought his remarks, affectionately eulogis- 
tic of the United States and highly complimentary to 
their distinguished representative at that table, to a 
close, amid a vast deal of cheering; and the band 
struck up " Hail Columbia," I believe, though it might 
have been " Old Hundred," or " God save the Queen" 
over again, for anything that I should have known or 
cared. When the music ceased, there was an intensely 
disagreeable instant, during which I seemed to rend 
away and fling off the habit of a lifetime, and rose, 
still void of ideas, but with preternatural composure, 
to make a speech. The guests rattled on the table, 
and cried, " Hear ! " most vociferously, as if now, at 
length, in this foolish and idly garrulous world, had 
come the long-expected moment when one golden word 
was to be spoken ; and in that imminent crisis, I 
caught a glimpse of a little bit of an effusion of inter- 
national sentiment, which it might, and must, and 
should do to utter. 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 385 

Well ; it was nothing, as the Sergeant had said. 
What surprised me most was the sound of my own 
voice, which I had never before heard at declamatory- 
pitch, and which impressed me as belonging to some 
other person, who, and not myself, would be responsi- 
ble for the speech : a prodigious consolation and en- 
couragement under the circumstances I I went on 
without the slightest embarrassment, and sat down 
amid great applause, wholly undeserved by anything 
that I had spoken, but well won from Englishmen, me- 
thought, by the new development of pluck that alone 
had enabled me to speak at all. " It was handsomely 
done ! " quoth Sergeant Wilkins ; and I felt like a re- 
cruit who had been for the first time under fire. 

I would gladly have ended my oratorical career then 
and there forever, but was often placed in a similar or 
worse position, and compelled to meet it as I best 
might ; for this was one of the necessities of an office 
which I had voluntarily taken on my shoulders, and 
beneath which I might be crushed by no moral delin- 
quency on my own part, but could not shirk without 
cowardice and shame. My subsequent fortune was va- 
rious. Once, though I felt it to be a kind of impos- 
ture, I got a speech by heart, and doubtless it might 
have been a very pretty one, only I forgot every sylla- 
ble at the moment of need, and had to improvise an- 
other as well as I could. I found it a better method 
to prearrange a few points in my mind, and trust to 
the spur of the occasion, and the kind aid of Provi- 
dence, for enabling me to bring them to bear. The 
presence of any considerable proportion of personal 
friends generally dumbfounded me. I would rather 
have talked with an enemy in the gate. Invariably, 
too, I was much embarrassed by a small audience, and 

VOL. VII. 25 



386 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

succeeded better with a large one, — the sympathy of 
a multitude possessing a buoyant effect, which lifts the 
speaker a little way out of his individuality, and tosses 
him towards a perhaps better range of sentiment than 
his private one. Again, if I rose carelessly and con- 
fidently, with an expectation of going through the busi 
ness entirely at my ease, I often found that I had lit 
tie or nothing to say ; whereas, if I came to the charge 
in perfect despair, and at a crisis when failure would 
have been horrible, it once or twice happened that the 
frightful emergency concentrated my poor faculties, 
and enabled me to give definite and vigorous expres- 
sion to sentiments which an instant before looked as 
vague and far off as the clouds in the atmosphere. 
On the whole, poor as my own success may have 
been, I apprehend that any intelligent man with a 
tongue possesses the chief requisite of oratorical pow- 
er, and may develop many of the others, if he deems it 
worth while to bestow a great amount of labor and 
pains on an object which the most accomplished ora- 
tors, I suspect, have not found altogether satisfactory 
to their highest impulses. At any rate, it must be a 
remarkably true man who can keep his own elevated 
conception of truth when the lower feeling of a multi- 
tude is assailing his natural sympathies, and who can 
speak out frankly the best that there is in him, when 
by adulterating it a little, or a good deal, he knows 
that he may make it ten times as acceptable to the au- 
dience. 

This slight article on the civic banquets of England 
would be too wretchedly imperfect without an at- 
tempted description of a Lord Mayor's dinner at the 
Mansion House in London. I should have preferred 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 387 

the annual feast at Guildhall, but never had the good 
fortune to witness it. Once, however, I was honored 
with an invitation to one of the regular dinners, and 
gladly accepted it, — taking the precaution, neverthe- 
less, though it hardly seemed necessary, to inform the 
City-King, through a mutual friend, that I was no fit 
representative of American eloquence, and must hum- 
bly make it a condition that I should not be expected 
to open my mouth, except for the reception of his 
Lordship's bountiful hospitality. The reply was gra- 
cious and acquiescent ; so that I presented myself in 
the great entrance-hall of the Mansion House, at half- 
past six o'clock, in a state of most enjoyable freedom 
from the pusillanimous apprehensions that often tor- 
mented me at such times. The Mansion House was 
built in Queen Anne's days, in the very heart of old 
London, and is a palace worthy of its inhabitant, were 
he really as great a man as his traditionary state and 
pomp would seem to indicate. Times are changed, 
however, since the days of Whittington, or even of 
Hogarth's Industrious Apprentice, to whom the high- 
est imaginable reward of lifelong integrity was a seat 
in the Lord Mayor's chair. People nowadays say that 
the real dignity and importance have perished out of 
the office, as they do, sooner or later, out of all earthly 
institutions, leaving only a painted and gilded shell 
like that of an Easter egg, and that it is only second- 
rate and third-rate men who now condescend to be am- 
bitious of the Mayoralty. I felt a little grieved at 
this ; for the original emigrants of New England had 
strong sympathies with the people of London, who 
were mostly Puritans in religion and Parliamentarians 
in politics, in the early days of our country ; so that 
the Lord Mayor was a potentate of huge dimensions 



888 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

in the estimation of our forefathers, and held to be 
hardly second to the prime minister of the throne. 
The true great men of the city now appear to have 
aims beyond city greatness, connecting themselves 
with national politics, and seeking to be identified 
with the aristocracy of the country. 

In the entrance-hall I was received by a body of 
footmen dressed in a livery of blue coats and buff 
breeches, in which they looked wonderfully like Amer- 
ican Revolutionary generals, only bedizened with far 
more lace and embroidery than those simple and grand 
old heroes ever dreamed of wearing. There were like- 
wise two very imposing figures, whom I should have 
taken to be military men of rank, being arrayed in 
scarlet coats and large silver epaulets ; but they turned 
out to be officers of the Lord Mayor's household, and 
were now employed in assigning to the guests the 
places which they were respectively to occupy at the 
dinner-table. Our names (for I had included myself 
in a little group of friends) were announced ; and as- 
cending the staircase, we met his Lordship in the door- 
way of the first reception-room, where, also, we had the 
advantage of a presentation to the Lady Mayoress. 
As this distinguished couple retired into private life 
at the termination of their year of office, it is inad- 
missible to make any remarks, critical or laudatory, 
on the manners and bearing of two personages sud- 
denly emerging from a position of respectable medioc- 
rity into one of preeminent dignity within their own 
sphere. Such individuals almost always seem to grow 
nearly or quite to the full size of their office. If it 
were desirable to write an essay on the latent aptitude 
of ordinary people for grandeur, we have an exempli- 
fication in our own country, and on a scale incompara* 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 389 

bly greater than that of the Mayoralty, though in- 
vested with nothing like the outward magnificence that 
gilds and embroiders the latter. If I have been cor- 
rectly informed, the Lord Mayor's salary is exactly 
double that of the President of the United States, and 
yet is found very inadequate to his necessary expen- 
diture. 

There were two reception-rooms, thrown into one by 
the opening of wide folding-doors ; and though in an 
old style, and not yet so old as to be venerable, they 
are remarkably handsome apartments, lofty as well as 
spacious, with carved ceilings and walls, and at either 
end a splendid fireplace of white marble, ornamented 
with sculptured wreaths of flowers and foliage. The 
company were about three hundred, many of them ce- 
lebrities in politics, war, literature, and science, though 
I recollect none preeminently distinguished in either 
department. But it is certainly a pleasant mode of 
doing honor to men of literature, for example, who de- 
serve well of the public, yet do not often meet it face 
to face, thus to bring them together under genial au- 
spices, in connection with persons of note in other lines. 
I know not what may be the Lord Mayor's mode or 
principle of selecting his guests, nor whether, during 
his official term, he can proffer his hospitality to every 
man of noticeable talent in the wide world of London, 
nor, in fine, whether his Lordship's invitation is much 
sought for or valued ; but it seemed to me that this 
periodical feast is one of the many sagacious methods 
which the English have contrived for keeping up a 
good understanding among different sorts of people. 
Like most other distinctions of society, however, I pre- 
sume that the Lord Mayor's card does not often seek 
out modest merit, but comes at last when the recip- 



890 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

ient is conscious of the bore, and doubtful about the 
honor. 

One very pleasant characteristic, which I never met 
with at any other public or partially public dinner, 
was the presence of ladies. No doubt, they were prin- 
cipally the wives and daughters of city magnates ; and 
if we may judge from the many sly allusions in old 
plays and satirical poems, the city of London has al- 
ways been famous for the beauty of its women and the 
reciprocal attractions between them and the men of 
quality. Be that as it might, while straying hither 
and thither through those crowded apartments, I saw 
much reason for modifying certain heterodox opinions 
which I had imbibed, in my Transatlantic newness 
and rawness, as regarded the delicate character and 
frequent occurrence of English beauty. To state the 
entire truth (being, at this period, some years old in 
English life), my taste, I fear, had long since begun 
to be deteriorated by acquaintance with other models 
of feminine loveliness than it was my happiness to 
know in America. I often found, or seemed to find, 
if I may dare to confess it, in the persons of such of 
my dear countrywomen as I now occasionally met, a 
certain meagreness, (Heaven forbid that I should call 
it scrawniness !) a deficiency of physical development, 
a scantiness, so to speak, in the pattern of their ma- 
terial make, a paleness of complexion, a thinness of 
voice, — all of which characteristics, nevertheless, only 
made me resolve so much the more sturdily to uphold 
these fair creatures as angels, because I was some- 
times driven to a half-acknowledgment that the Eng- 
lish ladies, looked at from a lower point of view, were 
perhaps a little finer animals than they. The advan- 
tages of the latter, if any they could really be said to 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 391 

have, were all comprised in a few additional lumps of 
clay on their shoulders and other parts of their figures. 
It would be a pitiful bargain to give up the ethereal 
charm of American beauty in exchange for half a hun- 
dred-weight of human clay ! 

At a given signal we all found our way into an im- 
mense room, called the Egyptian Hall, I know not 
why, except that the architecture was classic, and as 
different as possible from the ponderous style of Mem- 
phis and the Pyramids. A powerful band played in- 
spiringly as we entered, and a brilliant profusion of 
light shone down on two long tables, extending the 
whole length of the hall, and a cross-table between 
them, occupying nearly its entire breadth. Glass 
gleamed and silver glistened on an acre or two of 
snowy damask, over which were set out all the accom- 
paniments of a stately feast. We found our places 
without much difficulty, and the Lord Mayor's chap- 
lain implored a blessing on the food, — a ceremony 
which the English never omit, at a great dinner or a 
small one, yet consider, I fear, not so much a religious 
rite as a sort of preliminary relish before the soup. 

The soup, of course, on this occasion, was turtle, of 
which, in accordance with immemorial custom, each 
guest was allowed two platefuls, in spite of the other- 
wise immitigable law of table-decorum. Indeed, judg- 
ing from the proceedings of the gentlemen near me, I 
surmised that there was no practical limit, except the 
appetite of the guests and the capacity of the soup- 
tureens. Not being fond of this civic dainty, I par- 
took of it but once, and then only in accordance with 
the wise maxim, always to taste a fruit, a wine, or a 
celebrated dish, at its indigenous site ; and the very 
fountain-head of turtle-soup, I suppose, is in the Lord 



392 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

Mayor's dinner-pot. It is one of those orthodox cus- 
toms which people follow for half a century without 
knowing why, to drink a sip of rum-punch, in a very 
small tumbler, after the soup. It was excellently well- 
brewed, and it seemed to me almost worth while to 
sup the soup for the sake of sipping the punch. The 
rest of the dinner was catalogued in a bill -of -fare 
printed on delicate white paper within an arabesque 
border of green and gold. It looked very good, not 
only in the English and French names of the numer- 
ous dishes, but also in the positive reality of the dishes 
themselves, which were all set on the table to be 
carved and distributed by the guests. This ancient 
and honest method is attended with a good deal of 
trouble, and a lavish effusion of gravy, yet by no 
means bestowed or dispensed in vain, because you 
have thereby the absolute assurance of a banquet ac- 
tually before your eyes, instead of a shadowy promise 
in the bill-of-fare, and such meagre fulfilment as a sin- 
gle guest can contrive to get upon his individual plate. 
I wonder that Englishmen, who are fond of looking 
at prize-oxen in the shape of butcher' s-meat, do not 
generally better estimate the aesthetic gormandism of 
devouring the whole dinner with their eyesight^ before 
proceeding to nibble the comparatively few morsels 
which, after all, the most heroic appetite and widest 
stomachic capacity of mere mortals can enable even 
an alderman really to eat. There fell to my lot three 
delectable things enough, which I take pains to re- 
member, that the reader may not go away wholly un- 
satisfied from the Barmecide feast to which I have 
bidden him, — a red mullet, a plate of mushrooms, 
exquisitely stewed, and part of a ptarmigan, a bird of 
the same family as the grouse, but feeding high up 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 393 

towards the summit of the Scotch mountains, whence 
it gets a wild delicacy of flavor very superior to that 
of the artificially nurtured English game-fowl. All 
the other dainties have vanished from my memory as 
completely as those of Prospero's banquet after Ariel 
had clapped his wings over it. The band played at 
intervals inspiriting us to new efforts, as did likewise 
the sparkling wines which the footmen supplied from 
an inexhaustible cellar, and which the guests quaffed 
with little apparent reference to the disagreeable fact 
that there comes a to-morrow morning after every 
feast. As long as that shall be the case, a prudent 
man can never have full enjoyment of his dinner. 

Nearly opposite to me, on the other side of the 
table, sat a young lady in white, whom I am sorely 
tempted to describe, but dare not, because not only 
the supereminence of her beauty, but its peculiar char- 
acter, would cause the sketch to be recognized, how- 
ever rudely it might be drawn. I hardly thought 
that there existed such a woman outside of a picture- 
frame, or the covers of a romance : not that I had 
ever met with her resemblance even there, but, being 
so distinct and singular an apparition, she seemed like- 
lier to find her sisterhood in poetry and picture than 
in real life. Let us turn away from her, lest a touch 
too apt should compel her stately and cold and soft 
and womanly grace to gleam out upon my page with 
a strange repulsion and unattainableness in the very 
spell that made her beautiful. At her side, and famil- 
iarly attentive to her, sat a gentleman of whom I re- 
member only a hard outline of the nose and forehead, 
and such a monstrous portent of a beard that you 
could discover no symptom of a mouth, except when 
he opened it to speak, or to put in a morsel of food. 



394 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

Then, indeed, you suddenly became aware of a cave 
hidden behind the impervious and darksome shrub- 
bery. There could be no doubt who this gentleman 
and lady were. Any child would have recognized 
them at a glance. It was Bluebeard and a new wife 
(the loveliest of the series, but with already a myste- 
rious gloom overshadowing her fair young brow) trav- 
elling in their honeymoon, and dining, among other 
distinguished strangers, at the Lord Mayor's table. 

After an hour or two of valiant achievement with 
knife and fork came the dessert ; and at the point of 
the festival where finger - glasses are usually intro- 
duced, a, large silver basin was carried round to the 
guests, containing rose-water, into which we dipped 
the ends of our napkins and were conscious of a de- 
lightful fragrance, instead of that heavy and weary 
odor, the hateful ghost of a defunct dinner. This 
seems to be an ancient custom of the city, not con- 
fined to the Lord Mayor's table, but never met with 
westward of Temple Bar. 

During all the feast, in accordance with another an- 
cient custom, the origin or purport of which I do not 
remember to have heard, there stood a man in armor, 
with a helmet on his head, behind his Lordship's chair. 
When the after-dinner wine was placed on the table, 
still another official personage appeared behind the 
chair, and proceeded to make a solemn and sonorous 
proclamation (in which he enumerated the principal 
guests, comprising three or four noblemen, several bar- 
onets, and plenty of generals, members of Parliament, 
aldermen, and other names of the illustrious, one of 
which sounded strangely familiar to my ears), ending 
in some such style as this : " and other gentlemen and 
ladies, here present, the Lord Mayor drinks to you all 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 395 

in a loving-cup," — giving a sort of sentimental twang 
to the two words, — " and sends it round among 
you!" And forthwith the loving-cup — several of 
them, indeed, on each side of the tables — came slowly 
down with all the antique ceremony. 

The fashion of it is thus. The Lord Mayor, stand- 
ing up and taking the covered cup in both hands, pre- 
sents it to the guest at his elbow, who likewise rises, 
and removes the cover for his Lordship to drink, which 
being successfully accomplished, the guest replaces the 
cover and receives the cup into his own hands. He 
then presents it to his next neighbor, that the cover 
may be again removed for himself to take a draught, 
after which the third person goes through a similar 
manoeuvre with a fourth, and he with a fifth, until the 
whole company find themselves inextricably inter- 
twisted and entangled in one complicated chain of love. 
When the cup came to my hands, I examined it crit- 
ically, both inside and out, and perceived it to be an 
antique and richly ornamented silver goblet, capable 
of holding about a quart of wine. Considering how 
much trouble we all expended in getting the cup to 
our lips, the guests appeared to content themselves 
with wonderfully moderate potations. In truth, nearly 
or quite the original quart of wine being still in the 
goblet, it seemed doubtful whether any of the com- 
pany had more than barely touched the silver rim be- 
fore passing it to their neighbors, — a degree of ab- 
stinence that might be accounted for by a fastidious 
repugnance to so many compotators in one cup, or 
possibly by a disapprobation of the liquor. Being cu- 
rious to know all about these important matters, with 
a view of recommending to my countrymen whatever 
they might usefully adopt, I drank an honest sip from 



396 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

the loving-cup, and had no occasion for another, — » 
ascertaining it to be Claret of a poor original quality, 
largely mingled with water, and spiced and sweetened. 
It was good enough, however, for a merely spectral or 
ceremonial drink, and could never have been intended 
for any better purpose. 

The toasts now began in the customary order, at- 
tended with speeches neither more nor less witty and 
ingenious than the specimens of table eloquence which 
had heretofore delighted me. As preparatory to each 
new display, the herald, or whatever he was, behind 
the chair of state, gave awful notice that the Right 
Honorable the Lord Mayor was about to propose a 
toast. His Lordship being happily delivered thereof, 
together with some accompanying remarks, the band 
played an appropriate tune, and the herald again is- 
sued proclamation to the effect that such or such a no- 
bleman, or gentleman, general, dignified clergyman, or 
what not, was going to respond to the Right Honor- 
able the Lord Mayor's toast ; then, if I mistake not, 
there was another prodigious flourish of trumpets and 
twanging of stringed instruments ; and, finally, the 
doomed individual, waiting all this while to be decapi- 
tated, got up and proceeded to make a fool of himself. 
A bashful young earl tried his maiden oratory on the 
good citizens of London, and, having evidently got 
every word by heart (even including, however he 
managed it, the most seemingly casual improvisations 
of the moment), he really spoke like a book, and made 
incomparably the smoothest speech I ever heard in 
England. 

The weight and gravity of the speakers, not only on 
this occasion, but all similar ones, was what impressed 
me as most extraordinary, not to say absurd. Why 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 397 

should people eat a good dinner, and put their spirits 
into festive trim with Champagne, and afterwards mel- 
low themselves into a most enjoyable state of quietude 
with copious libations of Sherry and old Port, and 
then disturb the whole excellent result by listening to 
speeches as heavy as an after-dinner nap, and in no 
degree so refreshing ? If the Champagne had thrown 
its sparkle over the surface of these effusions, or if 
the generous Port had shone through their substance 
with a ruddy glow of the old English humor, I might 
have seen a reason for honest gentlemen prattling in 
their cups, and should undoubtedly have been glad to 
be a listener. But there was no attempt nor impulse 
of the kind on the part of the orators, nor apparent 
expectation of such a phenomenon on that of the au- 
dience. In fact, I imagine that the latter were best 
pleased when the speaker embodied his ideas in the 
figurative language of arithmetic, or struck upon any 
hard matter of business or statistics, as a heavy-laden 
bark bumps upon a rock in mid-ocean. The sad se- 
verity, the too earnest utilitarianism, of modern life, 
have wrought a radical and lamentable change, I am 
afraid, in this ancient and goodly institution of civic 
banquets. People used to come to them, a few hun- 
dred years ago, for the sake of being jolly ; they come 
now with an odd notion of pouring sober wisdom into 
their wine by way of wormwood-bitters, and thus make 
such a mess of it that the wine and wisdom recipro- 
cally spoil one another. 

Possibly, the foregoing sentiments have taken a 
spice of acridity from a circumstance that happened 
about this stage of the feast, and very much inter- 
rupted my own further enjoyment of it. Up to this 
time, my condition had been exceedingly felicitous, 



398 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

both on account of the brilliancy of the scene, and be« 
cause I was in close proximity with three very pleas- 
ant English friends. One of them was a lady, whose 
honored name my readers would recognize as a house- 
hold word, if I dared write it ; another, a gentleman, 
likewise well known to them, whose fine taste, kind 
heart, and genial cultivation are qualities seldom mixed 
in such happy proportion as in him. The third was 
the man to whom I owed most in England, the warm 
benignity of whose nature was never weary of doing 
me good, who led me to many scenes of life, in town, 
camp, and country, which I never could have found 
out for myself, who knew precisely the kind of help a 
stranger needs, and gave it as freely as if he had not 
had a thousand more important things to live for. 
Thus I never felt safer or cosier at anybody's fireside, 
even my own, than at the dinner - table of the Lord 
Mayor. 

Out of this serene sky came a thunderbolt. His 
Lordship got up and proceeded to make some very eu- 
logistic remarks upon " the literary and commercial " 
— I question whether those two adjectives were ever 
before married by a copulative conjunction, and they 
certainly would not live together in illicit intercourse, 
of their own accord — "the literary and commercial 
attainments of an eminent gentleman there present," 
and then went on to speak of the relations of blood 
and interest between Great Britain and the aforesaid 
eminent gentleman's native country. Those bonds 
were more intimate than had ever before existed be- 
tween two great nations, throughout all history, and 
his Lordship felt assured that that whole honorable 
company would join him in the expression of a fervent 
wish that they might be held inviolably sacred, on both 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 399 

sides of the Atlantic, now and forever. Then came 
the same wearisome old toast, dry and hard to chew 
upon as a musty sea-biscuit, which had been the text 
of nearly all the oratory of my public career. The 
herald sonorously announced that Mr. So-and-so would 
now respond to his Right Honorable Lordship's toast 
and speech, the trumpets sounded the customary flour- 
ish for the onset, there was a thunderous rumble of 
anticipatory applause, and finally a deep silence sank 
upon the festive hall. 

All this was a horrid piece of treachery on the 
Lord Mayor's part, after beguiling me within his lines 
on a pledge of safe - conduct ; and it seemed very 
strange that he could not let an unobtrusive individual 
eat his dinner in peace, drink a small sample of the 
Mansion House wine, and go away grateful at heart 
for the old English hospitality. If his Lordship had 
sent me an infusion of ratsbane in the loving-cup, I 
should have taken it much more kindly at his hands. 
But I suppose the secret of the matter to have been 
somewhat as follows. 

All England, just then, was in one of those singular 
fits of panic excitement (not fear, though as sensitive 
and tremulous as that emotion), which, in consequence 
of the homogeneous character of the people, their in- 
tense patriotism, and their dependence for their ideas 
in public affairs on other sources than their own ex- 
amination and individual thought, are more sudden, 
pervasive, and unreasoning than any similar mood of 
our own public. In truth, I have never seen the 
American public in a state at all similar, and believe 
that we are incapable of it. Our excitements are not 
impulsive, like theirs, but, right or wrong, are moral 
$md intellectual. For example, the grand rising of 



400 CIVIC BANQUETS. 

the North, at the commencement of this war, bore the 
aspect of impulse and passion only because it was so 
universal, and necessarily done in a moment, just as 
the quiet and simultaneous getting-up of a thousand 
people out of their chairs would cause a tumult that 
might be mistaken for a storm. We were cool then, 
and have been cool ever since, and shall remain cool 
to the end, which we shall take coolly, whatever it 
may be. There is nothing which the English find it 
so difficult to understand in us as this characteristic. 
They imagine us, in our collective capacity, a kind of 
wild beast, whose normal condition is savage fury, and 
are always looking for the moment when we shall 
break through the slender barriers of international 
law and comity, and compel the reasonable part of the 
w r orld, with themselves at the head, to combine for the 
purpose of putting us into a stronger cage. At times 
this apprehension becomes so powerful (and when one 
man feels it, a million do), that it resembles the pas- 
sage of the wind over a broad field of grain, where you 
see the whole crop bending and swaying beneath one 
impulse, and each separate stalk tossing with the self- 
same disturbance as its myriad companions. At such 
periods all Englishmen talk with a terrible identity of 
sentiment and expression. You have the whole coun- 
try in each man ; and not one of them all, if you put 
him strictly to the question, can give a reasonable 
ground for his alarm. There are but two nations in 
the world — our own country and France — that can 
put England into this singular state. It is the united 
sensitiveness of a people extremely well-to-do, careful 
of their country's honor, most anxious for the preser- 
vation of the cumbrous and moss-grown prosperity 
which they have been so long in consolidating, and in- 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 401 

competent (owing to the national half-sightedness, and 
their habit of trusting to a few leading minds for their 
public opinion) to judge when that prosperity is really 
threatened. 

If the English were accustomed to look at the for- 
eign side of any international dispute, they might 
easily have satisfied themselves that there was very 
little danger of a war at that particular crisis, from 
the simple circumstance that their own Government 
had positively not an inch of honest ground to stand 
upon, and could not fail to be aware of the fact. 
Neither could they have met Parliament with any 
show of a justification for incurring war. It was no 
such perilous juncture as exists now, when law and 
right are really controverted on sustainable or plausi- 
ble grounds, and a naval commander may at any mo- 
ment fire off the first cannon of a terrible contest. If 
I remember it correctly, it was a mere diplomatic 
squabble, in which the British ministers, with the 
politic generosity which they are in the habit of show- 
ing towards their official subordinates, had tried to 
browbeat us for the purpose of sustaining an ambas- 
sador in an indefensible proceeding ; and the Ameri- 
ican Government (for God had not denied us an ad- 
ministration of statesmen then) had retaliated with 
stanch courage and exquisite skill, putting inevitably 
a cruel mortification upon their opponents, but indulg- 
ing them with no pretence whatever for active resent- 
ment. 

Now the Lord Mayor, like any other Englishman, 
probably fancied that War was on the western gale, 
and was glad to lay hold of even so insignificant an 
American as myself, who might be made to harp on 
the rusty old strings of national sympathies, identity 

vol. vii. 26 



402 CIVIC BANQUETS, 

of blood and Interest, and community of language and 
literature, and whisper peace where there was no 
peace, in however weak an utterance* And possibly 
his Lordship thought, in his wisdom, that the good 
feeling which was sure to be expressed by a company 
of well-bred Englishmen, at his august and far-famed 
dinner-table, might have an appreciable influence on 
the grand result. Thus, when the Lord Mayor in- 
vited me to his feast, it was a piece of strategy. He 
wanted to induce me to fling myself, like a lesser Cur- 
tius, with a larger object of self - sacrifice, into the 
chasm of discord between England and America, and, 
on my ignominious demur, had resolved to shove me 
in with his own right-honorable hands, in the hope of 
closing up the horrible pit forever. On the whole, I 
forgive his Lordship. He meant well by all parties, 
— himself, who would share the glory, and me, who 
ought to have desired nothing better than such an he- 
roic opportunity, ■ — his own country, which would 
continue to get cotton and breadstuffs, and mine, 
which would get everything that men work with and 
wear. 

As soon as the Lord Mayor began to speak, 1 
rapped upon my mind, and it gave forth a hollow 
sound, being absolutely empty of appropriate ideas. 
I never thought of listening to the speech, because I 
knew it all beforehand in twenty repetitions from 
other lips, and was aware that it would not offer a 
single suggestive point. In this dilemma, I turned 
to one of my three friends, a gentleman whom I knew 
to possess an enviable flow of silver speech, and ob- 
tested him, by whatever he deemed holiest, to give me 
at least an available thought or two to start with, and, 
once afloat, I would trust my guardian-angel for ena> 



CIVIC BANQUETS. 403 

bling me to flounder ashore again. He advised me 
to begin with some remarks complimentary to the 
Lord Mayor, and expressive of the hereditary rev- 
erence in which his office was held, — at least, my 
friend thought that there would be no harm in giving 
his Lordship this little sugar-plum, whether quite the 
fact or no, — was held by the descendants of the Pu- 
ritan forefathers. Thence, if I liked, getting flexible 
with the oil of my own eloquence, I might easily slide 
off into the momentous subject of the relations be- 
tween England and America, to which his Lordship 
had made such weighty allusion. 

Seizing this handful of straw with a death-grip, and 
bidding my three friends bury me honorably, I got 
upon my legs to save both countries, or perish in the 
attempt. The tables roared and thundered at me, 
and suddenly were silent again. But, as -I have never 
happened to stand in a position of greater dignity and 
peril, I deem it a stratagem of sage policy here to 
close these Sketches, leaving myself still erect in so 
heroic an attitude. 



PASSAGES 

FROM 

THE ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS 

OP 

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. 



To 
FRANCIS BENNOCH, Esq., 

The dear and valued friend, who, by his generous and genial hospitality 
and unfailing sympathy, contributed so largely (as is attested by the 
book itself) to render Mr. Hawthorne's residence in England agreeable 
and homelike, these English Notes are dedicated, with sincere respect 
and regard, by 

THE EDITOR. 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 



THE ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. 

Little comment is needed in reference to the 
u English Note-Books," besides that which Mrs. Haw- 
thorne made on first introducing them to the public. 
They were the result of Hawthorne's residence abroad, 
on being appointed Consul at Liverpool, by President 
Pierce. In 1857, just before leaving England for 
the Continent, Hawthorne, in writing to Mr. Fields, 
spoke of them as follows : — 

" I made up a huge package the other day, consist- 
ing of seven closely written volumes of journal, kept 
by me since my arrival in England, and filled with 
sketches of places and men and manners, many of 
which would doubtless be very delightful to the pub- 
lic. I think I shall seal them up, with directions in 
my will to have them opened and published a century 
hence ; and your firm shall have the refusal of them 
then." 

The jesting tone of these sentences shows clearly 
enough that he really had no intention of arranging 
for the publication of the Notes after his death ; and, 
in fact, he left no instructions concerning them. But 
Mrs. Hawthorne, in the Preface which follows the 
present editor's brief paragraphs, has explained the 
motives which led her to place her husband's journals 



408 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 

before the reading public. His object in writing them 
was to preserve for his own use, and the freshening 
of his recollection, those keen but fleeting impressions 
which are caused by the first contact with new scenes 
and persons, and never can be set forth with their 
original vividness unless promptly embodied in writ- 
ing. Portions of the current record which Hawthorne 
so carefully preserved were afterwards recast and util- 
ized in the chapters of " Our Old Home " ; and, had he 
lived longer, further material from them would very 
likely have been introduced into his finished work. 
Among the papers left by him bearing on " Septimius 
Felton," was a list of references, with the dates, to 
passages in his English journals, containing matter 
which he probably thought would prove suggestive 
and useful when he should come to that part of the 
contemplated romance which was to enact itself amid 
English surroundings. 

Although the " English Note-Books " are not so 
abundant in imaginative hints as the American, their 
range of topic and observation is wider, and they 
show how readily the author, who had lived as a 
recluse at home, adapted himself to society, to the 
obligations which his public position and his fame 
brought upon him. The larger intercourse with the 
world which he enjoyed in England was, indeed, much 
to his taste, notwithstanding the resolute devotion to 
solitude that he maintained in America, where the 
conditions seem to have been less well suited for 
bringing him into association with others, and left 
him to follow the dictates of an inborn reserve and 
shyness. Mrs. Hawthorne has expressed the hope 
that her husband's Note-Books might dispel the often- 
expressed opinion that he was gloomy or morbid ; and 



INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 409 

doubtless they have had, in a measure, this effect. 
The cheerful tone, blending with or rising above his 
natural pensiveness, is very noticeable in the pres- 
ent volumes ; and Mrs. Hawthorne, observing how it 
gained in strength instead of diminishing with age, 
once expressed to the writer of these lines the belief 
that, had Hawthorne survived in full health to a 
riper age, he would have written more than he did 
in the genial strain of " Our Old Home," which had 
long before voiced itself in the Introduction to the 
" Mosses." 

G. P. L. 



PREFACE. 



It seems justly due to Mr. Hawthorne that the oc* 
casion of any portion of his private journals being 
brought before the Public should be made known, 
since they were originally designed for his own refer- 
ence only. 

There had beeu a constant and an urgent demand 
for a life or memoir of Mr. Hawthorne ; yet, from 
the extreme delicacy and difficulty of the subject, the 
Editor felt obliged to refuse compliance with this de- 
mand. Moreover, Mr. Hawthorne had frequently and 
emphatically expressed the hope that no one would at- 
tempt to write his Biography; and the Editor per- 
ceived that it would be impossible for any person, out- 
side of his own domestic circle, to succeed in doing it, 
on account of his extreme reserve. But it was ungra- 
cious to do nothing, and therefore the Editor, believ- 
ing that Mr. Hawthorne himself was alone capable of 
satisfactorily answering the affectionate call for some 
sketch of his life, concluded to publish as much as 
possible of his private records, and even extracts from 
his private letters, in order to gratify the desire of 
his friends and of literary artists to become more in- 
timately acquainted with him. The Editor has been 
severely blamed and wondered at, in some instances, 
for allowing many things now published to see the 



412 PREFACE. 

light ; but it has been a matter both of conscience 
and courtesy to withhold nothing that could be given 
up. Many of the journals were doubtless destroyed ; 
for the earliest date found in his American papers 
was that of 1835. 

The Editor has transcribed the manuscripts just as 
they were left, without making any new arrangement 
or altering any sequence, — merely omitting some pas- 
sages, and being especially careful to preserve what- 
ever could throw any light upon his character. To 
persons on a quest for characteristics, however, each 
of his books reveals a great many, and it is believed 
that with the aid of the Notes (both American and 
English) the Tales and Romances will make out a 
very complete and true picture of his individuality ; 
and the Notes are often an open sesame to the artistic 
works. 

Several thickly written pages of observations — fine 
and accurate etchings — have been omitted, sometimes 
because too personal with regard to himself or others, 
and sometimes because they were afterwards absorbed 
into one or another of the Romances or papers in 
" Our Old Home." It seemed a pity not to give these 
original cartoons fresh from his mind, because they 
are so carefully finished at the first stroke. Yet, as 
Mr. Hawthorne chose his own way of presenting them 
to the public, it was thought better not to exhibit 
what he himself withheld. Besides, to any other than 
a fellow-artist, they might seem mere repetitions. 

It is very earnestly hoped that these volumes of 
Notes — American, English, and presently Italian — 
will dispel an often-expressed opinion that Mr. Haw- 
thorne was gloomy and morbid. He had the inevita- 
ble pensiveness and gravity of a person who possessed 



PREFACE. 413 

what a friend of his called " the awful power of in- 
sight " ; but his mood was always cheerful and equal, 
and his mind peculiarly healthful, and the airy splen- 
dor of his wit and humor was the light of his home. 
He saw too far to be despondent, though his vivid sym- 
pathies and shaping imagination often made him sad 
in behalf of others. He also perceived morbidness, 
wherever it existed, instantly, as if by the illumina- 
tion of his own steady cheer ; and he had the plastic 
power of putting himself into each person's situation, 
and of looking from every point of view, which made 
his charity most comprehensive. From this cause he 
necessarily attracted confidences, and became con- 
fessor to very many sinning and suffering souls, to 
whom he gave tender sympathy and help, while re- 
signing judgment to the Omniscient and All-wise. 

Throughout his journals it will be seen that Mr. 
Hawthorne is entertaining, and not asserting, opin- 
ions and ideas. He questions, doubts, and reflects 
with his pen, and, as it were, instructs himself. So 
that these Note-Books should be read, not as definitive 
conclusions of his mind, but merely as passing impres- 
sions often. Whatever conclusions he arrived at are 
condensed in the works given to the world by his own 
hand, in which will never be found a careless word. 
He was so extremely scrupulous about the value and 
effect of every expression, that the Editor has felt 
great compunction in allowing a single sentence to 
be printed unrevised by himself ; but, with the con- 
sideration of the above remarks always kept in mind, 
these volumes are intrusted to the generous interpret 
tation of the reader. If any one must be harshly criti* 
cised, it ought certainly to be the Editor. 



414 PREFACE. 

When a person breaks in, unannounced, upon the 
morning hours of an artist, and finds him not in full 
dress, the intruder, and not the surprised artist, is 
doubtless at fault. 

S.H. 

Dresden, April, 1870. 



PASSAGES FROM 

HAWTHORNE'S ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS 



Liverpool, August 4th, 1853. — A month lacking 
two days since we left America, — a fortnight and 
some odd days since we arrived in England. I began 
my services, such as they are, on Monday last, August 
1st, and here I sit in my private room at the Consu- 
late, while the Vice-Consul and clerk are carrying on 
affairs in the outer office. 

The pleasantest incident of the morning is when 
Mr. Pearce (the Vice-Consul) makes his appearance 
with the account-books, containing the receipts and 
expenditures of the preceding day, and deposits on my 
desk a little rouleau of the Queen's coin, wrapped up 
in a piece of paper. This morning there were eight 
sovereigns, four half-crowns, and a shilling, — a pretty 
fair day's work, though not more than the average 
ought to be. This forenoon, thus far, I have had two 
calls, not of business, — one from an American cap- 
tain and his son, another from Mr. H B , 

whom I met in America, and who has showed us great 
attention here. He has arranged for us to go to the 
theatre with some of his family this evening. 

Since I have been in Liverpool we have hardly had 



416 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1858. 

a day, until yesterday, without more or less of rain, 
and so cold and shivery that life was miserable. I am 
not warm enough even now, but am gradually getting 
acclimated in that respect. 

Just now I have been fooled out of half a crown by 
a young woman, who represents herself as an Ameri- 
can and destitute, having come over to see an uncle 
whom she found dead, and she has no means of get- 
ting back again. Her accent is not that of an Ameri- 
can, and her appearance is not particularly preposses- 
sing, though not decidedly otherwise. She is decently 
dressed and modest in deportment, but I do not quite 
trust her face. She has been separated from her hus- 
band, as I understand her, by course of law ; has had 
two children, both now dead. What she wants is to 
get back to America, and perhaps arrangements may 
be made with some shipmaster to take her as steward- 
ess, or in some subordinate capacity. My judgment, 
on the whole, is that she is an English woman, married 
to and separated from an American husband, — of no 
very decided virtue. I might as well have kept my 
half-crown, and yet I might have bestowed it worse. 
She is very decent in manner, cheerful, at least not 
despondent. 

At two o'clock I went over to the Royal Rock 
Hotel, about fifteen or twenty minutes' steaming from 
this side of the river. We are going there on Satur- 
day to reside for a while. Returning I found that 
Mr. B., from the American Chamber of Commerce, 
had called to arrange the time and place of a visit to 
the Consul from a delegation of that body. Settled 
for to-morrow at quarter past one at Mr. Blodgett's. 

August 5th. — An invitation this morning from 



1853.] LIVERPOOL. 417 

the Mayor to dine at the Town Hall on Friday next. 
Heaven knows I had rather dine at the humblest inn 
in the city, inasmuch as a speech will doubtless be ex- 
pected from me. However, things must be as they 
may. 

At quarter past one I was duly on hand at Mr. 
Blodgett's to receive the deputation from the Chamber 
of Commerce. They arrived pretty seasonably, in two 
or three carriages, and were ushered into the drawing- 
room, — seven or eight gentlemen, some of whom I 
had met before. Hereupon ensued a speech from Mr. 
B., the Chairman of the delegation, short and sweet, 
alluding to my literary reputation and other laudatory 
matters, and occupying only a minute or two. The 
speaker was rather embarrassed, which encouraged me 
a little, and yet I felt more diffidence on this occasion 
than in my effort at Mr. Crittenden's lunch, where, in- 
deed, I was perfectly self-possessed. But here, there 
being less formality, and more of a conversational 
character in what was said, my usual diffidence could 
not so well be kept in abeyance. However, I did not 
break down to an intolerable extent, and, winding up 
my eloquence as briefly as possible, we had a social 
talk. Their whole stay could not have been much 
more than a quarter of an hour. 

A call, this morning, at the Consulate, from Dr. 
Bowring, who is British minister, or something of the 
kind, in China, and now absent on a twelvemonth's 
leave. The Doctor is a brisk person, with the address 
of a man of the world, — free, quick to smile, and of 
agreeable manners. He has a good face, rather Amer- 
ican than English in aspect, and does not look much 
above fifty, though he says he is between sixty and 

vol. vii. 27 



418 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

seventy. I should take him rather for an active law- 
yer or a man of business than for a scholar and a lit- 
erary man. He talked in a lively way for ten or fif- 
teen minutes, and then took his leave, offering me any 
service in his power in London, — as, for instance, to 
introduce me to the Athenaeum Club. 

August 8th. — Day before yesterday I escorted my 
family to Rock Ferry, two miles either up or down the 
Mersey (and I really don't know which) by steamer, 
which runs every half-hour. There are steamers go- 
ing continually to Birkenhead and other landings, and 
almost always a great many passengers on the transit. 
At this time the boat was crowded so as to afford 
scanty standing-room ; it being Saturday, and there- 
fore a kind of gala-day. I think I have never seen a 
populace before coming to England; but this crowd 
afforded a specimen of one, both male and female. 
The women were the most remarkable ; though they 
seemed not disreputable, there was in them a coarse- 
ness, a freedom, an — I don't know what, that was 
purely English. In fact, men and women here do 
things that would at least make them ridiculous in 
America. They are not afraid to enjoy themselves 
in their own way, and have no pseudo-gentility to 
support. Some girls danced upon the crowded deck, 
to the miserable music of a little fragment of a 
band which goes up and down the river on each trip 
of the boat. Just before the termination of the voy- 
age a man goes round with a bugle turned upwards to 
receive the eleemosynary pence and half-pence of the 
passengers. I gave one of them, the other day, a sil- 
ver fourpence, which fell into the vitals of the instru- 
ment, and compelled the man to take it to pieces. 



1853.] LIVERPOOL. 419 

At Rock Ferry there was a great throng, forming a 
scene not unlike one of our muster-days or a Fourth 
of July, and there were bands of music and banners, 
and small processions after them, and a school of char- 
ity children, I believe, enjoying a festival. And there 
was a club of respectable persons, playing at bowls on 
the bowling-green of the hotel, and there were chil- 
dren, infants, riding on donkeys at a penny a ride, 
while their mothers walked alongside to prevent a fall. 
Yesterday, while we were at dinner, Mr. B. came in 
his carriage to take us to his residence, Poulton Hall. 
He had invited us to dine ; but I misunderstood him, 
and thought he only intended to give us a drive. 
Poulton Hall is about three miles from Rock Ferry, 
the road passing through some pleasant rural scenery, 
and one or two villages, with houses standing close to- 
gether, and old stone or brick cottages, with thatched 
roofs, and now and then a better mansion, apart 
among trees. We passed an old church, with a tower 
and spire, and, half-way up, a patch of ivy, dark 
green, and some yellow wall-flowers, in full bloom, 
growing out of the crevices of the stone. Mr. B. told 
us that the tower was formerly quite clothed with ivy 
from bottom to top, but that it had fallen away for 
lack of the nourishment that it used to find in the 
lime between the stones. This old church answered 
to my Transatlantic fancies of England better than 
anything I have yet seen. Not far from it was the 
Rectory, behind a deep grove of ancient trees ; and 
there lives the Rector, enjoying a thousand pounds a 
year and his nothing-to-do, while a curate performs 
the real duty on a stipend of eighty pounds. 

We passed through a considerable extent of private 
road, and finally drove over a lawn, studded with trees 



420 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

and closely shaven, till we reached the door of Poulton 
Hall. Part of the mansion is three or four hundred 
years old ; another portion is about a hundred and 
fifty, and still another has been built during the pres- 
ent generation. The house is two stories high, with a 
sort of beetle-browed roof in front. It is not very 
striking, and does not look older than many wooden 
houses which I have seen in America. There is a 
curious stately staircase, with a twisted balustrade, 
much like that of the old Province House in Boston. 
The drawing-room is a handsome modern apartment, 
being beautifully painted and gilded and paper-hung, 
with a white marble fireplace and rich furniture, so 
that the impression is that of newness, not of age. It 
is the same with the dining-room, and all the rest of 
the interior so far as I saw it. 

Mr. B. did not inherit this old hall, nor, indeed, is 
he the owner, but only the tenant of it. He is a mer- 
chant of Liverpool, a bachelor, with two sisters resid- 
ing with him. In the entrance-hall, there was a 
stuffed fox with glass eyes, which I never should have 
doubted to be an actual live fox except for his keeping 
so quiet ; also some grouse and other game. Mr. B. 
seems to be a sportsman, and is setting out this week 
on an excursion to Scotland, moor-fowl shooting. 

While the family and two or three guests went to 
dinner, we walked out to see the place. The gardener, 
an Irishman, showed us through the garden v which is 
large and well cared for. They certainly get every- 
thing from Nature which she can possibly be per- 
suaded to give them, here in England. There were 
peaches and pears growing against the high brick 
southern walls, — the trunk and branches of the trees 
being spread out perfectly flat against the wall, verv 



1853.] LIVERPOOL. 421 

much like the skin of a dead animal nailed up to dry, 
and not a single branch protruding. Figs were grow- 
ing in the same way. The brick wall, very probably, 
was heated within, by means of pipes, in order to re- 
enforce the insufficient heat of the sun. It seems as 
if there must be something unreal and unsatisfactory 
in fruit that owes its existence to such artificial meth- 
ods. Squashes were growing under glass, poor things ! 
There were immensely large gooseberries in the gar- 
den ; and in this particular berry, the English, I be- 
lieve, have decidedly the advantage over ourselves. 
The raspberries, too, were large and good. I espied 
one gigantic hog-weed in the garden ; and, really, my 
heart warmed to it, being strongly reminded of the 
principal product of my own garden at Concord. Af- 
ter viewing the garden sufficiently, the gardener led us 
to other parts of the estate, and we had glimpses of a 
delightful valley, its sides shady with beautiful trees, 
and a rich, grassy meadow at the bottom. By means 
of a steam - engine and subterranean pipes and hy- 
drants, the liquid manure from the barn-yard is dis- 
tributed wherever it is wanted over the estate, being 
spouted in rich showers from the hydrants. Under 
this influence, the meadow at the bottom of the val- 
ley had already been made to produce three crops of 
grass during the present season, and would produce 
another. 

The lawn around Poulton Hall, like thousands of 
other lawns in England, is very beautiful, but requires 
great care to keep it so, being shorn every three or 
four days. No other country will ever have this 
charm, nor the charm of lovely verdure, which almost 
makes up for the absence of sunshine. Without the 



422 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

constant rain and shadow which strikes us as so dis- 
mal, these lawns would be as brown as an autumn 
leaf. I have not, thus far, found any such magnifi- 
cent trees as I expected. Mr. B. told me that three 
oaks, standing in a row on his lawn, were the largest 
in the county. They were very good trees, to be sure, 
and perhaps four feet in diameter near the ground, 
but with no very noble spread of foliage. In Concord 
there are, if not oaks, yet certainly elms, a great deal 
more stately and beautiful. But, on the whole, this 
lawn, and the old Hall in the midst of it, went a good 
way towards realizing some of my fancies of English 
life. 

By and by a footman, looking very quaint and 
queer in his livery coat, drab breeches, and white 
stockings, came to invite me to the table, where I 
found Mr. B. and his sisters and guests sitting at the 
fruit and wine. There were port, sherry, madeira, 
and one bottle of claret, all very good ; but they take 
here much heavier wines than we drink now in Amer- 
ica. After a tolerably long session we went to the tea- 
room, where I drank some coffee, and at about the 
edge of dusk the carriage drew up to the door to take 
us home. Mr. B. and his sisters have shown us genu- 
ine kindness, and they gave us a hearty invitation to 
come and ramble over the house whenever we pleased, 
during their absence in Scotland. They say that 
there are many legends and ghost-stories connected 
with the house ; and there is an attic chamber, with 
a skylight, which is called the Martyr's chamber, from 
the fact of its having, in old times, been tenanted by 
a lady, who was imprisoned there, and persecuted to 
death for her religion. There is an old black letter 
library, but the room containing it is shut, barred, and 



1853] LIVERPOOL. 423 

padlocked, — the owner of the house refusing to let it 
be opened, lest some of the books should be stolen. 
Meanwhile the rats are devouring them, and the 
damps destroying them. 

August 9th. — A pretty comfortable day, as to 
warmth, and I believe there is sunshine overhead ; but 
a sea-cloud, composed of fog and coal-smoke, envelops 
Liverpool. At Rock Ferry, when I left it at half past 
nine, there was promise of a cheerful day. A good 
many gentlemen (or, rather, respectable business peo- 
ple) came in the boat, and it is not unpleasant, on these 
fine mornings, to take the breezy atmosphere of the 
river. The huge steamer, Great Britain, bound for 
Australia, lies right off the Rock Ferry landing ; and 
at a little distance are two old hulks of ships of war, 
dismantled, roofed over, and anchored in the river, 
formerly for quarantine purposes, but now used chiefly 
or solely as homes for old seamen, whose light labor it 
is to take care of these condemned ships. There are 
a great many steamers plying up and down the river 
to various landings in the vicinity ; and a good many 
steam-tugs ; also, many boats, most of which have 
dark-red or tan-colored sails, being oiled to resist the 
wet ; also, here and there, a yacht, or pleasure-boat, 
and a few ships riding stately at their anchors, prob- 
ably on the point of sailing. The river, however, is 
by no means crowded ; because the immense multitude 
of ships are ensconced in the docks, where their masts 
make an intricate forest for miles up and down the 
Liverpool shore. The small, black steamers, whizzing 
industriously along, many of them crowded with pas- 
sengers, make up the chief life of the scene. The Mer- 
sey has the color of a mud-puddle, and no atmospheric 



424 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

effect, as far as I have seen, ever gives it a more agree* 
able tinge. 

Visitors to-day, thus far, have been H. A. B., with 
whom I have arranged to dine with us at Rock Ferry, 
and then he is to take us on board the Great Britain, 
of which his father is owner (in great part). Sec- 
ondly, Monsieur H., the French Consul, who can speak 
hardly any English, and who was more powerfully 
scented with cigar-smoke than any man I ever encoun- 
tered ; a polite, gray-haired, red-nosed gentleman, very 
courteous and formal. Heaven keep him from me ! 

At one o'clock, or thereabouts, I walked into the 
city, down through Lord Street, Church Street, and 
back to the Consulate, through various untraceable 
crookednesses. Coming to Chapel Street, I crossed 
the graveyard of the old Church of St. Nicholas. This 
is, I suppose, the oldest sacred site in Liverpool, a 
church having stood here ever since the Conquest, 
though, probably, there is little or nothing of the old 
edifice in the present one, either the whole of the edi- 
fice or else the steeple, being thereto shaken by a 
chime of bells, — or perhaps both, at different times, 
— has tumbled down ; but the present church is what 
we Americans should call venerable. When the first 
church was built, and long afterwards, it must have 
stood on the grassy verge of the Mersey ; but now 
there are pavements and warehouses, and the thronged 
Prince's and George's Docks, between it and the river; 
and all around it is the very busiest bustle of com- 
merce, rumbling wheels, hurrying men, porter-shops, 
everything that pertains to the grossest and most prac- 
tical life. And, notwithstanding, there is the broad 
churchyard extending on three sides of it, just as it 
used to be a thousand years ago, It is absolutely 



1853.] LIVERPOOL. 425 

paved from border to border with flat tombstones, on 
a level with the soil and with each other, so that it is 
one floor of stone over the whole space, with grass here 
and there sprouting between the crevices. All these 
stones, no doubt, formerly had inscriptions ; but, as 
many people continually pass, in various directions, 
across the churchyard, and as the tombstones are not 
of a very hard material, the records on many of them 
are effaced. I saw none very old. A quarter of a 
century is sufficient to obliterate the letters, and make 
all smooth, where the direct pathway from gate to gate 
lies over the stones. The climate and casual footsteps 
rub out any inscription in less than a hundred years. 
Some of the monuments are cracked. On many is 
merely cut " The burial-place of " so and so ; on oth- 
ers there is a long list of half -readable names ; on 
some few a laudatory epitaph, out of which, however, 
it were far too tedious to pick the meaning. But it 
really is interesting and suggestive to think of this old 
church, first built when Liverpool was a small village, 
and remaining, with its successive dead of ten centuries 
around it, now that the greatest commercial city in the 
world has its busiest centre there. I suppose people 
still continue to be buried in the cemetery. The great- 
est upholders of burials in cities are those whose pro- 
genitors have been deposited around or within the city 
churches. If this spacious churchyard stood in a sim- 
ilar position in one of our American cities, I rather 
suspect that long ere now it would have run the risk 
of being laid out in building-lots, and covered with 
warehouses ; even if the church itself escaped, — but it 
would not escape longer than till its disrepair afforded 
excuse for tearing it down. And why should it, when 
its purposes might be better served in another spot ? 



426 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

We went on board the Great Britain before dinner, 
between five and six o'clock, — a great structure, as 
to convenient arrangement and adaptation, but giving 
me a strong impression of the tedium and misery of 
the long voyage to Australia. By way of amusement, 
she takes over fifty pounds' worth of playing-cards, at 
two shillings per pack, for the use of passengers ; also, 
a small, well - selected library. After a considerable 
time spent on board, we returned to the hotel and 
dined, and Mr. B. took his leave at nine o'clock. 

August IQtJi. — I left Rock Ferry for the city at 
half past nine. In the boat which arrived thence, there 
were several men and women with baskets on their 
heads, for this is a favorite way of carrying burdens ; 
and they trudge onward beneath them, without any 
apparent fear of an overturn, and seldom putting up 
a hand to steady them. One woman, this morning, 
had a heavy load of crockery ; another, an immense 
basket of turnips, freshly gathered, that seemed to me 
as much as a man could well carry on his back. These 
must be a stiff-necked people. The women step stur- 
dily and freely, and with not ungraceful strength. The 
trip over to town was pleasant, it being a fair morn- 
ing, only with a low-hanging fog. Had it been in 
America, I should have anticipated a day of burning 
heat. 

Visitors this morning. Mr. Ogden, of Chicago, or 
somewhere in the Western States, who arrived in Eng- 
land a fortnight ago, and who called on me at that 
time. He has since been in Scotland, and is now going 
to London and the Continent ; secondly, the Captain 
of the Collins's steamer Pacific, which sails to-day ; 
thirdly, an American shipmaster, who complained that 



1858.] LIVERPOOL. 427 

he had never, in his heretofore voyages, been able to 
get sight of the American Consul. 

Mr. Pearce's customary matutinal visit was unusu- 
ally agreeable to-day, inasmuch as he laid on my desk 
nineteen golden sovereigns and thirteen shillings. It 
being the day of the steamer's departure, an unusual 
number of invoice certificates had been required, — 
my signature to each of which brings me two dollars. 

The autograph of a living author has seldom been so 
much in request at so respectable a price. Colonel 
Crittenden told me that he had received as much as 
fifty pounds on a single day. Heaven prosper the 
trade between America and Liverpool ! 

August 15th. — Many scenes which I should have 
liked to record have occurred ; but the pressure of 
business has prevented me from recording them from 
day to day. 

On Thursday I went, on invitation from Mr. B., to 
the prodigious steamer Great Britain, down the har- 
bor, and some miles into the sea, to escort her off a 
little way on her voyage to Australia. There is an 
immense enthusiasm among the English people about 
this ship, on account of its being the largest in the 
world. The shores were lined with people to see her 
sail, and there were innumerable small steamers, 
crowded with men, all the way out into the ocean. 
Nothing seems to touch the English nearer than this 
question of nautical superiority ; and if we wish to hit 
them to the quick, we must hit them there. 

On Friday, at 7 P. M., I went to dine with the 
Mayor. It was a dinner given to the Judges and the 
Grand Jury. The Judges of England, during the 
time of holding an Assize, are the persons first in 



428 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

rank in the kingdom. They take precedence of every- 
body else, — of the highest military officers, of the 
Lord Lieutenants, of the Archbishops, — of the Prince 
of Wales, — of all except the Sovereign, whose author- 
ity and dignity they represent. In case of a royal 
dinner, the Judge would lead the Queen to the table. 

The dinner was at the Town Hall, and the rooms 
and the whole affair were all in the most splendid 
style. Nothing struck me more than the footmen in 
the city livery. They really looked more magnificent 
in their gold-lace and breeches and white silk stock- 
ings than any officers of state. The rooms were beau- 
tiful ; gorgeously painted and gilded, gorgeously 
lighted, gorgeously hung with paintings, — the plate 
was gorgeous, and the dinner gorgeous in the English 
fashion. 

After the removal of the cloth the Mayor gave vari- 
ous toasts, prefacing each with some remarks, — the 
first, of course, the Sovereign, after which " God save 
the Queen " was sung, the company standing up and 
joining in the chorus, their ample faces glowing with 
wine, enthusiasm, and loyalty. Afterwards the Bar, 
and various other dignities and institutions, were 
toasted ; and by and by came the toast to the United 
States, and to me, as their Representative. Here- 
upon either " Hail Columbia," or " Yankee Doodle," 
or some other of our national tunes (but Heaven 
knows which), was played ; and at the conclusion, 
being at bay, and with no alternative, I got upon my 
legs, and made a response. They received me and 
listened to my nonsense with a good deal of rapping, 
and my speech seemed to give great satisfaction ; my 
chief difficulty being in not knowing how to pitch my 
voice to the size of the room. As for the matter, it is 



*853.] LIVERPOOL. 429 

not of the slightest consequence. Anybody may make 
an after-dinner speech who will be content to talk on- 
ward without saying anything. My speech was not 
more than two or three inches long ; and, considering 
that I did not know a soul there, except the Mayor 
himself, and that I am wholly unpractised in all sorts 
of oratory, and that I had nothing to say, it was quite 
successful. I hardly thought it was in me, but, be- 
ing once started, I felt no embarrassment, and went 
through it as coolly as if I were going to be hanged. 

Yesterday, after dinner, I took a walk with my 
family. We went through by-ways and private roads, 
and saw more of rural England, with' its hedge-rows, 
its grassy fields, and its whitewashed old stone cot- 
tages, than we have before seen since our arrival. 

August 20^A. — This being Saturday, there early 
commenced a throng of visitants to Rock Ferry. The 
boat in which I came over brought from the city a 
multitude of factory - people. They had bands of 
music, and banners inscribed with the names of the 
mills they belong to, and other devices : pale-looking 
people, but not looking exactly as if they were under- 
fed. They are brought on reduced terms by the rail- 
ways and steamers, and come from great distances in 
the interior. These, I believe, were from Preston. I 
have not yet had an opportunity of observing how they 
amuse themselves during these excursions. 

At the dock, the other day, the steamer arrived 
from Rock Ferry with a countless multitude of little 
girls, in coarse blue gowns, who, as they landed, 
formed in procession, and walked up the dock. These 
girls had been taken from the workhouses and edu- 
cated at a charity-school, and would by and by be ap- 



430 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1851 

prenticed as servants. I should not have conceived it 
possible that so many children could have been col- 
lected together, without a single trace of beauty or 
scarcely of intelligence in so much as one individual ; 
such mean, coarse, vulgar features and figures betray- 
ing unmistakably a low origin, and ignorant and bru- 
tal parents. They did not appear wicked, but only 
stupid, animal, and soulless. It must require many 
generations of better life to wake the soul in them. 
All America could not show the like. 

August 22c?. — A Captain Auld, an American, hav- 
ing died here yesterday, I went with my clerk and an 
American shipmaster to take the inventory of his ef- 
fects. His boarding-house was in a mean street, an 
old dingy house, with narrow entrance, — the class of 
boarding-house frequented by mates of vessels, and in- 
ferior to those generally patronized by masters. A fat 
elderly landlady, of respectable and honest aspect, and 
her daughter, a pleasing young woman enough, re- 
ceived us, and ushered us into the deceased's bed- 
chamber. It was a dusky backroom, plastered and 
painted yellow ; its one window looking into the very 
narrowest of backyards or courts, and out on a con- 
fused multitude of back buildings, appertaining to 
other houses, most of them old, with rude chimneys 
of wash-rooms and kitchens, the bricks of which 
seemed half loose. 

The chattels of the dead man were contained in two 
trunks, a chest, a sail-cloth bag, and a barrel, and con' 
sisted of clothing, suggesting a thickset, middle-sized 
man ; papers relative to ships and business, a spyglass, 
a loaded iron pistol, some books of navigation, some 
charts, several great pieces of tobacco, and a few 



1853.] LIVERPOOL. 431 

cigars \ some little plaster images, that he had prob- 
ably bought for his children, a cotton umbrella, and 
other trumpery of no great value. In one of the 
trunks we found about twenty pounds' worth of Eng- 
lish and American gold and silver, and some notes of 
hand, due in America. Of all these things the clerk 
made an inventory ; after which we took possession of 
the money, and affixed the consular seal to the trunks, 
bag, and chest. 

While this was going on, we heard a great noise 
of men quarrelling in an adjoining court ; and, alto- 
gether, it seemed a squalid and ugly place to live in, 
and a most undesirable one to die in. At the conclu- 
sion of our labors, the young woman asked us if we 
would not go into another chamber, and look at the 
corpse, and appeared to think that we should be rather 
glad than otherwise of the privilege. But, never hav- 
ing seen the man during his lifetime, I declined to 
commence his acquaintance now. 

His bills for board and nursing amount to about 
the sum which we found in his trunk ; his funeral ex- 
penses will be ten pounds more ; the surgeon has sent 
in a bill of eight pounds, odd shillings ; and the ac- 
count of another medical man is still to be rendered. 
As his executor, I shall pay his landlady and nurse ; 
and for the rest of the expenses, a subscription must 
be made (according to the custom in such cases) 
among the shipmasters, headed by myself. The fu- 
neral pomp will consist of a hearse, one coach, four 
men, with crape hatbands, and a few other items, to- 
gether with a grave at five pounds, over which his 
friends will be entitled to place a stone, if they choose 
to do so, within twelve months. 

As we left the house, we looked into the dark and 



432 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

squalid dining-room, where a lunch of cold meat was 
set out ; but having no associations with the house ex- 
cept through this one dead man, it seemed as if his 
presence and attributes pervaded it wholly. He ap- 
pears to have been a man of reprehensible habits, 
though well advanced in years. 1 ought not to forget 
a brandy-flask (empty) among his other effects. The 
landlady and daughter made a good impression on me, 
as honest and respectable persons. 

August 24:th. — Yesterday, in the forenoon, I re- 
ceived a note, and shortly afterwards a call at the 

Consulate, from Miss H , whom I apprehend to 

be a lady of literary tendencies. She said that Miss 
L. had promised her an introduction, but that, hap- 
pening to pass through Liverpool, she had snatched the 
opportunity to make my acquaintance. She seems to 
be a mature lady, rather plain, but with an honest and 
intelligent face. It was rather a singular freedom, me- 
thinks, to come down upon a perfect stranger in this 
way, — to sit with him in his private office an hour 
or two, and then walk about the streets with him as 
she did ; for I did the honors of Liverpool, and showed 
her the public buildings. Her talk was sensible, but 
not particularly brilliant nor interesting ; a good, solid 
personage, physically and intellectually. She is an 
English woman. 

In the afternoon, at three o'clock, I attended the fu- 
neral of Captain Auld. Being ushered into the din- 
ing-room of his boarding-house, I found brandy, gin, 
and wine set out on a tray, together with some little 
spice-cakes. By and by came in a woman, who asked 
if I were going to the funeral ; and then proceeded to 
put a mourning-band on my hat, — a black-silk band, 



1853] LIVERPOOL. 433 

covering the whole hat, and streaming nearly a yard 
behind. After waiting the better part of an hour, no- 
body else appeared, although several shipmasters had 
promised to attend. Hereupon, the undertaker was 
anxious to set forth ; but the landlady, who was ar- 
rayed in shining black silk, thought it a shame that 
the poor man should be buried with such small at- 
tendance. So we waited a little longer, during which 
interval I heard the landlady's daughter sobbing and 
wailing in the entry ; and but for this tender-hearted- 
ness there would have been no tears at all. Finally 
we set forth, — the undertaker, a friend of his, and 
a young man, perhaps the landlady's son, and my- 
self, in the black-plumed coach, and the landlady, her 
daughter, and a female friend, in the coach behind. 
Previous to this, however, everybody had taken some 
wine or spirits ; for it seemed to be considered disre- 
spectful not to do so. 

Before us went the plumed hearse, a stately affair, 
with a bas-relief of funereal figures upon its sides. We 
proceeded quite across the city to the Necropolis, where 
the coffin was carried into a chapel, in which we found 
already another coffin, and another set of mourners, 
awaiting the clergyman. Anon he appeared, — a stern, 
broad-framed, large, and bald-headed man, in a black- 
silk gown. He mounted his desk, and read the service 
in quite a feeble and unimpressive way, though with 
no lack of solemnity. This done, our four bearers took 
up the coffin, and carried it out of the chapel ; but de- 
scending the steps, and, perhaps, having taken a little 
too much brandy, one of them stumbled, and down 
came the coffin, — not quite to the ground, however ; 
for they grappled with it, and contrived, with a great 
struggle, to prevent the misadventure. But I really 

vol. vii. 28 



434 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853- 

expected to see poor Captain Auld burst forth among 
us in his grave-clothes. 

The Necropolis is quite a handsome burial-place, 
shut in by high walls, so overrun with shrubbery that 
no part of the brick or stone is visible. Part of the 
space within is an ornamental garden, with flowers 
and green turf ; the rest is strewn with flat grave- 
stones, and a few raised monuments; and straight 
avenues run to and fro between. Captain Auld's grave 
was dug nine feet deep. It is his own for twelve 
months ; but, if his friends do not choose to give him 
a stone, it will become a common grave at the end of 
that time ; and four or five more bodies may then be 
piled upon his. Every one seemed greatly to admire 
the grave ; the undertaker praised it, and also the dry- 
ness of its site, which he took credit to himself for 
having chosen. The grave-digger, too, was very proud 
of its depth, and the neatness of his handiwork. The 
clergyman, who had marched in advance of us from 
the chapel, now took his stand at the head of the 
grave, and, lifting his hat, proceeded with what re- 
mained of the service, while we stood bareheaded 
around. When he came to a particular part, " ashes 
to ashes, dust to dust," the undertaker lifted a hand- 
ful of earth, and threw it rattling on the coffin, — so 
did the landlady's son, and so did I. After the fu- 
neral the undertaker's friend, an elderly, coarse-look- 
ing man, looked round him, and remarked that " the 
grass had never grown on the parties who died in the 
cholera year " ; but at this the undertaker laughed in 
scorn. 

As we returned to the gate of the cemetery, the sex- 
ton met us, and pointed to a small office, on entering 
which we found the clergyman, who was waiting for 



1853.] LIVERPOOL. 435 

his burial-fees. There was now a dispute between the 
clergyman and the undertaker ; the former wishing to 
receive the whole amount for the gravestone, which 
the undertaker, of course, refused to pay. I explained 
how the matter stood ; on which the clergyman ac- 
quiesced, civilly enough ; but it was very strange to 
see the worldly, business-like way in which he entered 
into this squabble, so soon after burying poor Captain 
Auld. 

During our drive back in the mourning-coach, the 
undertaker, his friend, and the landlady's son still 
kept descanting on the excellence of the grave, — 
" Such a fine grave," — " Such a nice grave," — 
" Such a splendid grave," — and, really, they seemed 
almost to think it worth while to die, for the sake of 
being buried there. They deemed it an especial pity 
that such a grave should ever become a common 
grave. " Why," said they to me, " by paying the ex- 
tra price you may have it for your own grave, or for 
your family ! " meaning that we should have a right 
to pile ourselves over the defunct Captain. I wonder 
how the English ever attain to any conception of a 
future existence, since they so overburden themselves 
with earth and mortality in their ideas of funerals. A 
drive with an undertaker, in a sable-plumed coach ! — 
talking about graves ! — and yet he was a jolly old 
fellow, wonderfully corpulent, with a smile breaking 
out easily all over his face, — although, once in a 
while, he looked professionally lugubrious. 

All the time the scent of that horrible mourning- 
coach is in my nostrils, and I breathe nothing but a 
funeral atmosphere. 



436 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

Saturday, August 21th. — This being the gala-day 
of the manufacturing people about Liverpool, the 
steamboats to Rock Ferry were seasonably crowded 
with large parties, of both sexes. They were accom- 
panied with two bands of music, in uniform ; and 
these bands, before I left the hotel, were playing, in 
competition and rivalry with each other in the coach- 
yard, loud martial strains from shining brass instru- 
ments. A prize is to be assigned to one or to the 
other of these bands, and I suppose this was a part of 
the competition. Meanwhile the merry-making people 
who thronged the court-yard were quaffing coffee from 
blue earthen mugs, which they brought with them, — 
as likewise they brought the coffee, and had it made 
in the hotel. 

It had poured with rain about the time of their ar- 
rival, notwithstanding which they did not seem dis- 
heartened ; for, of course, in this climate, it enters 
into all their calculations to be drenched through and 
through. By and by the sun shone out, and it has 
continued to shine and shade every ten minutes ever 
since. All these people were decently dressed ; the 
men generally in dark clothes, not so smartly as Amer- 
icans on a festal day, but so as not to be greatly dif- 
ferent as regards dress. They were paler, smaller, less 
wholesome -looking and less intelligent, and, I think, 
less noisy, than so many Yankees would have been. 
The women and girls differed much more from what 
American girls and women would be on a pleasure- 
excursion, being so shabbily dressed, with no kind of 
smartness, no silks, nothing but cotton gowns, I be- 
lieve, and ill-looking bonnets, — which, however, was 
the only part of their attire that they seemed to care 
about guarding from the rain. As to their persons, 



1853.] A WALK TO BEBBINGTOK 437 

they generally looked better developed and healthier 
than the men ; but there was a woful lack of beauty 
and grace, not a pretty girl among them, all coarse 
and vulgar. Their bodies, it seems to me, are apt to 
be very long in proportion to their limbs, — in truth, 
this kind of make is rather characteristic of both sexes 
in England. The speech of these folks, in some in- 
stances, was so broad Lancashire that I could not well 
understand it. 

A WALK TO BEBBINGTON. 

Hock Ferry, August 29th. — Yesterday we all took 
a walk into the country. It was a fine afternoon, with 
clouds, of course, in different parts of the sky, but 
a clear atmosphere, bright sunshine, and altogether a 
Septembrish feeling. The ramble was very pleasant 
along the hedge-lined roads, in which there were flow- 
ers blooming, and the varnished holly, certainly one of 
the most beautiful shrubs in the world, so far as foli- 
age goes. We saw one cottage which I suppose was 
several hundred years old. It was of stone, filled into 
a wooden frame, the black-oak of which was visible 
like an external skeleton ; it had a thatched roof, and 
was whitewashed. We passed though a village, — 
Higher Bebbington, I believe, — with narrow streets 
and mean houses, all of brick or stone, and not stand- 
ing wide apart from each other as in American coun- 
try villages, but conjoined. There was an immense 
almshouse in the midst ; at least, I took it to be so. 
In the centre of the village, too, we saw a moderate- 
sized brick house, built in imitation of a castle with a 
tower and turret, in which an upper and an under row 
of small cannon were mounted, — now green with 
moss. There were also battlements along the roof of 



438 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

the house, which looked as if it might have been built 
eighty or a hundred years ago. In the centre of it 
there was the dial of a clock, but the inner machinery 
had been removed, and the hands, hanging listlessly, 
moved to and fro in the wind. It was quite a novel 
symbol of decay and neglect. On the wall, close to 
the street, there were certain eccentric inscriptions cut 
into slabs of stone, but I could make no sense of them. 
At the end of the house opposite the turret, we peeped 
through the bars of an iron gate and beheld a little 
paved court-yard, and at the farther side of it a small 
piazza, beneath which seemed to stand the figure of a 
man. He appeared well advanced in years, and was 
dressed in a blue coat and buff breeches, with a white 
or straw hat on his head. Behold, too, in a kennel be- 
side the porch, a large dog sitting on his hind legs, 
chained ! Also, close beside the gateway, another man, 
seated in a kind of arbor ! All these were wooden 
images ; and the whole castellated, small, village 
dwelling, with the inscriptions and the queer statuary, 
was probably the whim of some half -crazy person, who 
has now, no doubt, been long asleep in Bebbington 
churchyard. 

The bell of the old church was ringing as we 
went along, and many respectable-looking people and 
cleanly dressed children were moving towards the 
sound. Soon we reached the church, and I have seen 
nothing yet in England that so completely answered 
my idea of what such a thing was, as this old village 
church of Bebbington. 

It is quite a large edifice, built in the form of a 
cross, a low peaked porch in the side, over which, 
rudely cut in stone, is the date 1300 and something. 
The steeple has ivy on it, and looks old, old, old ; so 



1853.] A WALK TO BEBBINGTON. 439 

does the whole church, though portions of it have been 
renewed, but not so as to impair the aspect of heavy, 
substantial endurance, and long, long decay, which 
may go on hundreds of years longer before the church 
is a ruin. There it stands, among the surrounding- 
graves, looking just the same as it did in Bloody 
Mary's days ; just as it did in Cromwell's time. A 
bird (and perhaps many birds) had its nest in the 
steeple, and flew in and out of the loopholes that were 
opened into it. The stone framework of the windows 
looked particularly old. 

There were monuments about the church, some lying 
flat on the ground, others elevated on low pillars, or on 
cross slabs of stone, and almost all looking dark, moss- 
grown, and very antique. But on reading some of the 
inscriptions, I was surprised to find them very recent ; 
for, in fact, twenty years of this climate suffices to 
give as much or more antiquity of aspect, whether to 
gravestone or edifice, than a hundred years of our own, 
— so soon do lichens creep over the surface, so soon 
does it blacken, so soon do the edges lose their sharp- 
ness, so soon does Time gnaw away the records. The 
only really old monuments (and those not very old) 
were two, standing close together, and raised on low 
rude arches, the dates on which were 1684 and 1686. 
On one a cross was rudely cut into the stone. But 
there may have been hundreds older than this, the 
records on which had been quite obliterated, and the 
stones removed, and the graves dug over anew. None 
of the monuments commemorate people of rank ; on 
only one the buried person was recorded as " Gent." 

While we sat on the flat slabs resting ourselves, 
several little girls, healthy-looking and prettily dressed 
enough, came into the churchyard, and began to talk 



440 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

and laugh, and to skip merrily from one tombstone to 
another. They stared very broadly at us, and one of 
them, by and by, ran up to U. and J., and gave each 
of them a green apple, then they skipped upon the 
tombstones again, while, within the church, we heard 
the singing, — sounding pretty much as I have heard 
it in our pine-built New England meeting-houses. 
Meantime the rector had detected the voices of these 
naughty little girls, and perhaps had caught glimpses 
of them through the windows ; for, anon, out came the 
sexton, and, addressing himself to us, asked whether 
there had been any noise or disturbance in the church- 
yard. I should not have borne testimony against 
these little villagers, but S. was so anxious to exoner- 
ate our own children that she pointed out these poor 
little sinners to the sexton, who forthwith turned them 
out. He would have done the same to us, no doubt, 
had my coat been worse than it was ; but, as the mat- 
ter stood, his demeanor was rather apologetic than 
menacing, when he informed us that the rector had 
sent him. 

We stayed a little longer, looking at the graves, 
some of which were between the buttresses of the 
church and quite close to the wall, as if the sleepers 
anticipated greater comfort and security the nearer 
they could get to the sacred edifice. 

As we went out of the churchyard, we passed the 
aforesaid little girls, who were sitting behind the 
mound of a tomb, and busily babbling together. They 
called after us, expressing their discontent that we had 
betrayed them to the sexton, and saying that it was 
not they who made the noise. Going homeward, we 
went astray in a green lane, that terminated in the 



1853.] THE MERSEY. 441 

midst of a field, without outlet, so that we had to re- 
trace a good many of our footsteps. 

Close to the wall of the church, beside the door, 
there was an ancient baptismal font of stone. In fact, 
it was a pile of roughly hewn stone steps, five or six 
feet high, with a block of stone at the summit, in which 
was a hollow about as big as a wash-bowl. It was full 
of rain-water. 

The church seems to be St. Andrew's Church, Lower 
Bebbington, built in 1100. 

September 1st — To-day we leave the Rock Ferry 
Hotel, where we have spent nearly four weeks. It is 
a comfortable place, and we have had a good table and 
have been kindly treated. We occupied a large par- 
lor, extending through the whole breadth of the house, 
with a bow-window, looking towards Liverpool, and 
adown the intervening river, and to Birkenhead, on 
the hither side. The river would be a pleasanter ob- 
ject, if it were blue and transparent, instead of such 
a mud - puddly hue ; also, if it were always full to its 
brim ; whereas it generally presents a margin, and 
sometimes a very broad one, of glistening mud, with 
here and there a small vessel aground on it. 

Nevertheless, the parlor-window has given us a pretty 
good idea of the nautical business of Liverpool ; the 
constant objects being the little black steamers puff- 
ing unquietly along, sometimes to our own ferry, some- 
times beyond it to Eastham, and sometimes towing a 
long string of boats from Runcorn or otherwhere up 
the river, laden with goods, and sometimes gallanting 
a tall ship in or out. Some of these ships lie for days 
together in the river, very majestic and stately ob- 
jects, often with the flag of the Stars and Stripes 



442 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

waving over them. Now and then, after a gale at sea, 
a vessel comes in with her masts broken short off in 
the midst, and with marks of rough handling about 
the hull. Once a week comes a Cunard steamer, with 
its red funnel pipe whitened by the salt spray ; and, 
firing off cannon to announce her arrival, she moors 
to a large iron buoy in the middle of the river, and a 
few hundred yards from the stone pier of our ferry. 
Immediately comes puffing towards her a little mail- 
steamer, to take away her mail-bags and such of the 
passengers as choose to land ; and for several hours 
afterwards the Cunard lies with the smoke and steam 
coming out of her, as if she were smoking her pipe 
after her toilsome passage across the Atlantic. Once 
a fortnight comes an American steamer of the Collins 
line ; and then the Cunard salutes her with cannon, 
to which the Collins responds, and moors herself to 
another iron buoy, not far from the Cunard. When 
they go to sea, it is with similar salutes ; the two ves- 
sels paying each other the more ceremonious respect, 
because they are inimical and jealous of each other. 

Besides these, there are other steamers of all sorts 
and sizes, for pleasure-excursions, for regular trips to 
Dublin, the Isle of Man, and elsewhither ; and ves- 
sels which are stationary, as floating lights, but which 
seem to relieve one another at intervals ; and small 
vessels, with sails looking as if made of tanned leather ; 
and schooners, and yachts, and all manner of odd- 
looking craft, but none so odd as the Chinese junk. 
This junk lies by our own pier, and looks as if it were 
copied from some picture on an old teacup. Beyond 
all these objects we see the other side of the Mersey, 
with the delectably green fields opposite to us, while 

e shore becomes more and more thickly populated, 



1853.] ROCK PARK. 443 

until about two miles off we see the dense centre of the 
city, with the dome of the Custom House, and steeples 
and towers ; and, close to the water, the spire of St. 
Nicholas ; and above, and intermingled with the whole 
city scene, the duskiness of the coal-smoke gushing up- 
ward. Along the bank we perceive the warehouses of 
the Albert Dock, and the Queen's tobacco warehouses, 
and other docks, and, nigher to us, a shipyard or two. 
In the evening all this sombre picture gradually dark- 
ens out of sight, and in its place appear only the lights 
of the city, kindling into a galaxy of earthly stars, for 
a long distance, up and down the shore ; and, in one or 
two spots, the bright red gleam of a furnace, like the 
" red planet Mars " ; and once in a while a bright, 
wandering beam gliding along the river, as a steamer 
comes or goes between us and Liverpool. 

ROCK PARK. 

September 2d. — We got into our new house in 
Rock Park yesterday. It is quite a good house, with 
three apartments, beside kitchen and pantry on the 
lower floor ; and it is three stories high, with four 
good chambers in each story. It is a stone edifice, 
like almost all the English houses, and handsome in 
its design. The rent, without furniture, would prob- 
ably have been one hundred pounds ; furnished, it is 
one hundred and sixty pounds. Rock Park, as the 
locality is called, is private property, and is now 
nearly covered with residences for professional people, 
merchants, and others of the upper middling class; 
the houses being mostly built, I suppose, on specula- 
tion, and let to those who occupy them. It is the 
quietest place imaginable, there being a police station 
at the entrance, and the officer on duty allows no 



444 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

ragged or ill-looking person to pass. There being a 
toll, it precludes all unnecessary passage of carriages ; 
and never were there more noiseless streets than those 
that give access to these pretty residences. On either 
side there is thick shrubbery, with glimpses through 
it of the ornamented portals, or into the trim gardens 
with smooth-shaven lawns, of no large extent, but 
still affording reasonable breathing-space. They are 
really an improvement on anything, save what the 
very rich can enjoy, in America. The former occu- 
pants of our house (Mrs. Campbell and family) hav- 
ing been fond of flowers, there are many rare varie- 
ties in the garden, and we are told that there is 
scarcely a month in the year when a flower will not 
be found there. 

The house is respectably, though not very elegantly, 
furnished. It was a dismal, rainy day yesterday, and 
we had a coal-fire in the sitting-room, beside which I 
sat last evening as twilight came on, and thought, 
rather sadly, how many times we have changed our 
home since we were married. In the first place, our 
three years at the Old Manse ; then a brief residence 
at Salem, then at Boston, then two or three years at 
Salem again ; then at Lenox, then at West Newton, 
and then again at Concord, where we imagined that 
we were fixed for life, but spent only a year. Then 
this farther flight to England, where we expect to 
spend four years, and afterwards another year or two 
in Italy, during all which time we shall have no real 
home. For, as I sat in this English house, with the 
chill, rainy English twilight brooding over the lawn, 
and a coal-fire to keep me comfortable on the first 
evening of September, and the picture of a stranger 
• — the dead husband of Mrs. Campbell — gazing down 



1853.] LIVERPOOL. 445 

at me from above the mantel-piece, — I felt that 1 
never should be quite at home here. Nevertheless, 
the fire was very comfortable to look at, and the 
shape of the fireplace — an arch, with a deep cavity 
— was an improvement on the square, shallow open- 
ing of an American coal-grate. 

September 1th. — It appears by the annals of Liver- 
pool, contained in Gore's Directory, that in 1076 there 
was a baronial castle built by Roger de Poictiers on 
the site of the present St. George's Church. It was 
taken down in 1721. The church now stands at one 
of the busiest points of the principal street of the 
city. The old Church of St. Nicholas, founded about 
the time of the Conquest, and more recently rebuilt, 
stood within a quarter of a mile of the castle. 

In 1150, Birkenhead Priory was founded on the 
Cheshire side of the Mersey. The monks used to ferry 
passengers across to Liverpool until 1282, when 
Woodside Ferry was established, — twopence for a 
horseman, and a farthing for a foot-passenger. Steam 
ferry-boats now cross to Birkenhead, Monk's Ferry, 
and Woodside every ten minutes ; and I believe there 
are large hotels at all these places, and many of the 
business men of Liverpool have residences in them. 

In 1252 a tower was built by Sir John Stanley, 
which continued to be a castle of defence to the Stan- 
ley family for many hundred years, and was not finally 
taken down till 1820, when its site had become the 
present Water Street, in the densest commercial cen- 
tre of the city. 

There appear to have been other baronial castles 
and residences in different parts of the city, as a hall 
in old Hall Street, built by Sir John de la More, on 



446 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

the site of which a counting-house now stands. This 
knightly family of De la More sometimes supplied 
mayors to the city, as did the family of the Earls of 
Derby. 

About 1582, Edward, Earl of Derby, maintained 
two hundred and fifty citizens of Liverpool, fed sixty 
aged persons twice a day, and provided twenty-seven 
hundred persons with meat, drink, and money every 
Good Friday. 

In 1644, Prince Rupert besieged the town for 
twenty-four days, and finally took it by storm. This 
was June 26th, and the Parliamentarians, under Sir 
John Meldrum, repossessed it the following October. 

In 1669, the Mayor of Liverpool kept an inn. 

In 1730, there was only one carriage in town, and 
no stage-coach came nearer than Warrington, the 
roads being impassable. 

In 1734, the Earl of Derby gave a great entertain- 
ment in the tower. 

In 1737, the Mayor was George Norton, a saddler, 
who frequently took the chair with his leather apron 
on. His immediate predecessor seems to have been 
the Earl of Derby, who gave the above-mentioned 
entertainment during his mayoralty. Where George's 
Dock now is, there used to be a battery of fourteen 
eighteen-pounders for the defence of the town, and the 
old sport of bull-baiting was carried on in that vicin- 
ity, close to the Church of St. Nicholas. 

September 12th. — On Saturday a young man was 
found wandering about in West Derby, a suburb of 
Liverpool, in a state of insanity, and, being taken be- 
fore a magistrate, he proved to be an American. As 
he seemed to be in a respectable station of life, the 



1853] LIVERPOOL. 447 

magistrate sent the master of the workhouse to me in 
order to find out whether I would take the responsi- 
bility of his expenses, rather than have him put in the 
workhouse. My clerk went to investigate the mat- 
ter, and brought me his papers. His name proves 

to be -, belonging to , twenty-five years 

of age. One of the papers was a passport from our 
legation in Naples ; likewise there was a power of at- 
torney from his mother (who seems to have been mar- 
ried a second time) to dispose of some property of 
hers abroad ; a hotel bill, also, of some length, in 
which were various charges for wine ; and, among 
other evidences of low funds, a pawnbroker's receipt 
for a watch, which he had pledged at five pounds. 
There was also a ticket for his passage to America, by 
the screw steamer Andes, which sailed on Wednesday 
last. The clerk found him to the last degree incom- 
municative ; and nothing coidd be discovered from 
him but what the papers disclosed. There were about 
a dozen utterly unintelligible notes among the papers, 
written by himself since his derangement. 

I decided to put him into the insane hospital, where 
he now accordingly is, and to-morrow (by which time 
he may be in a more conversable mood) I mean to 
pay him a visit. 

The clerk tells me that there is now, and has been 
for three years, an American lady in the Liverpool 
ahnshouse, in a state of insanity. She is very accom- 
plished, especially in music ; but in all this time it has 
been impossible to find out who she is, or anything 
about her connections or previous life. She calls her- 
self Jenny Lind, and as for any other name or iden- 
tity she keeps her own secret. 



448 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

/Se])tember 14:th. — It appears that Mr. (the 

insane young gentleman) being unable to pay his bill 
at the inn where he was latterly staying, the landlord 
had taken possession of his luggage, and satisfied him- 
self in that way. My clerk, at my request, has taken 
his watch out of pawn. It proves to be not a very 
good one, though doubtless worth more than five 
pounds, for which it was pledged. The Governor of 
the Lunatic Asylum wrote me yesterday, stating that 
the patient was in want of a change of clothes, and 
that, according to his own account, he had left his lug- 
gage at the American Hotel. After office -hours, I 
took a cab, and set out, with my clerk, to pay a visit to 
the Asylum, taking the American Hotel in our way. 

The American Hotel is a small house, not at all 
such a one as American travellers of any pretension 
would think of stopping at, but still very respectable, 
cleanly, and with a neat sitting-room, where the guests 
might assemble after the American fashion. We 
asked for the landlady, and anon down she came, a 
round, rosy, comfortable-looking English dame of fifty 
or thereabouts. On being asked whether she knew a 

Mr. , she readily responded that he had been 

there, but had left no luggage, having taken it away 
before paying his bill; and that she had suspected 
him of meaning to take his departure without paying 
her at all. Hereupon she had traced him to the hotel 
before mentioned, where she had found that he had 
stayed two nights, — but was then, I think, gone from 
thence. Afterwards she encountered him again, and, 
demanding her due, went with him to a pawnbroker's, 
where he pledged his watch and paid her. This was 
about the extent of the landlady's knowledge of the 
matter. I liked the woman very well, with her shrewd, 
good-humored, worldly, kindly disposition. 



1853.] LIVERPOOL. 449 

Then we proceeded to the Lunatic Asylum, to which 
we were admitted by a porter at the gate. Within 
doors we found some neat and comely servant-women, 
one of whom showed us into a handsome parlor, and 
took my card to the Governor. There was a large 
bookcase, with a glass front, containing handsomely 
bound books, many of which, I observed, were of a 
religious character. In a few minutes the Governor 
came in, a middle-aged man, tall, and thin for an 
Englishman, kindly and agreeable enough in aspect, 
but not with the marked look of a man of force and 
ability. I should not judge from his conversation that 
he was an educated man, or that he had any scientific 
acquaintance with the subject of insanity. 

He said that Mr. — — was still quite incommuni- 
cative, and not in a very promising state ; that I had 
perhaps better defer seeing him for a few days ; that 
it would not be safe, at present, to send him home to 
America without an attendant, and this was about all. 
But on returning home I learned from my wife, who 
had had a call from Mrs. Blodgett, that Mrs. Blodgett 

knew Mr. and his mother, who has recently been 

remarried to a young husband, and is now somewhere 
in Italy. They seemed to have boarded at Mrs. 
Blodgett's house on their way to the Continent, and 
within a week or two, an acquaintance and pastor of 

Mr. - , the Rev. Dr. -, had sailed for America. 

If I could only have caught him, I could have trans- 
ferred the care, expense, and responsibility of the pa- 
tient to him. The Governor of the Asylum men- 
tioned, by the way, that Mr. describes himself 

as having been formerly a midshipman in the navy. 

I walked through the St. James's cemetery yester^ 

VOL. VII. 29 



450 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [185S. 

day. It is a very pretty place, dug out of the rock, 
having formerly, I believe, been a stone - quarry. It 
is now a deep and spacious valley, with graves and 
monuments on its level and grassy floor, through 
which run gravel-paths, and where grows luxuriant 
shrubbery. On one of the steep sides of the valley, 
hewn out of the rock, are tombs, rising in tiers, to the 
height of fifty feet or more ; some of them cut di- 
rectly into the rock with arched portals, and others 
built with stone. On the other side the bank is of 
earth, and rises abruptly, quite covered with trees, 
and looking very pleasant with their green shades. 
It was a warm and sunny day, and the cemetery really 
had a most agreeable aspect. I saw several gravestones 
of Americans ; but what struck me most was one line 
of an epitaph on an English woman, " Here rests in 
pease a virtuous wife." The statue of Huskisson 
stands in the midst of the valley, in a kind of mau- 
soleum, with a door of plate-glass, through which you 
look at the dead statesman's effigy. 

September 22c?. — ... Some days ago an Ameri- 
can captain came to the office, and said he had shot 
one of his men, shortly after sailing from New Or- 
leans, and while the ship was still in the river. As 
he described the event, he was in peril of his life from 
this man, who was an Irishman ; and he fired his pis- 
tol only when the man was coming upon him, with a 
knife in one hand, and some other weapon of offence 
in the other, while he himself was struggling with one 
or two more of the crew. He was weak at the time, 
having just recovered from the yellow fever. The 
shots struck the man in the pit of the stomach, and 
he lived only about a quarter of an hour. No magis- 



1853.] LIVERPOOL. 451 

trate in England has a right to arrest or examine the 
captain, unless by a warrant from the Secretary of 
State, on the charge of murder. After his statement 
to me, the mother of the slain man went to the police 
officer, and accused him of killing her son. Two or 
three days since, morever, two of the sailors came be- 
fore me, and gave their account of the matter ; and it 
looked very differently from that of the captain. Ac- 
cording to them, the man had no idea of attacking the 
captain, and was so drunk that he could not keep him- 
self upright without assistance. One of these two men 
was actually holding him up when the captain fired 
two barrels of his pistol, one immediately after the 
other, and lodged two balls in the pit of his stomach. 
The man sank down at once, saying, " Jack, I am 
killed,'' — and died very shortly. Meanwhile the cap- 
tain drove this man away, under threats of shooting 
him likewise. Both the seamen described the cap- 
tain's conduct, both then and during the whole voy- 
age, as outrageous, and I do not much doubt that it 
was so. They gave their evidence like men who 
wished to tell the truth, and were moved by no more 
than a natural indignation at the captain's wrong. 

I did not much like the captain from the first, — a 
hard, rough man, with little education, and nothing of 
the gentleman about him, a red face and a loud voice. 
He seemed a good deal excited, and talked fast and 
much about the event, but yet not as if it had sunk 
deeply into him. He observed that he " would not 
have had it happen for a thousand dollars," that be- 
ing the amount of detriment which he conceives him- 
self to suffer by the ineffaceable blood-stain on his 
hand. In my opinion it is little short of murder, if 
at all ; but what would be murder on shore is almost 



452 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

a natural occurrence when done in such a hell on 
earth as one of these ships, in the first hours of the 
voyage. The men are then all drunk, — some of them 
often in delirium tremens ; and the captain feels no 
safety for his life except in making himself as terri- 
ble as a fiend. It is the universal testimony that 
there is a worse set of sailors in these short voyages 
between Liverpool and America than in any other 
trade whatever. 

There is no probability that the captain will ever be 
called to account for this deed. He gave, at the time, 
his own version of the affair in his log-book ; and this 
was signed by the entire crew, with the exception of 
one man, who had hidden himself in the hold in ter- 
ror of the captain. His mates will sustain his side of 
the question ; and none of the sailors would be within 
reach of the American courts, even should they be 
sought for. 

October 1st — On Thursday I went with Mr. Tick- 
nor to Chester by railway. It is quite an indescrib- 
able old town, and I feel at last as if I had had a 
glimpse of old England. The wall encloses a large 
space within the town, but there are numerous houses 
and streets not included within its precincts. Some 
of the principal streets pass under the ancient gate- 
ways ; and at the side there are flights of steps, giving 
access to the summit. Around the top of the whole 
wall, a circuit of about two miles, there runs a walk, 
well paved with flagstones, and broad enough for three 
persons to walk abreast. On one side — that towards 
the country — there is a parapet of red freestone three 
or four feet high. On the other side there are houses, 
rising up immediately from the wall, so that they seem 



1853.] CHESTER. 453 

a part of it. The height of it, I suppose, may be 
thirty or forty feet, and, in some parts, you look down 
from the parapet into orchards, where there are tall 
apple-trees, and men on the branches, gathering fruit, 
and women and children among the grass, filling bags 
or baskets. There are prospects of the surrounding 
country among the buildings outside the wall ; at one 
point, a view of the river Dee, with an old bridge of 
arches. It is all very strange, very quaint, very curi- 
ous to see how the town has overflowed its barrier, and 
how, like many institutions here, the ancient wall still 
exists, but is turned to quite another purpose than 
what it was meant for, — so far as it serves any pur- 
pose at all. There are three or four towers in the 
course of the circuit ; the most interesting being one 
from the top of which King Charles the First is said 
to have seen the rout of his army by the Parliamenta- 
rians. We ascended the short flight of steps that led 
up into the tower, where an old man pointed out the 
site of the battle-field, now thickly studded with build- 
ings, and told us what we had already learned from the 
guide-book. After this we went into the cathedral, 
which I will perhaps describe on some other occasion, 
when I shall have seen more of it, and to better advan- 
tage. The cloisters gave us the strongest impression of 
antiquity ; the stone arches being so worn and black- 
ened by time. Still an American must always have 
imagined a better cathedral than this. There were 
some immense windows of painted glass, but all mod- 
ern. In the chapter-house we found a coal-fire burn- 
ing in a grate, and a large heap of old books — the li- 
brary of the cathedral — in a discreditable state of 
ilecay, — mildewed, rotten, neglected for years. The 
sexton told us that they were to be arranged and bet- 



454 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

ter ordered. Over the door, inside, hung two faded 
and tattered banners, being those of the Cheshire regi- 
ment. 

The most utterly indescribable feature of Chester is 
the Rows, which every traveller has attempted to de- 
scribe. At the height of several feet above some of 
the oldest streets, a walk runs through the front of 
the houses, which project over it. Back of the walk 
there are shops ; on the outer side is a space of two 
or three yards, where the shopmen place their tables, 
and stands, and show-cases ; overhead, just high enough 
for persons to stand erect, a ceiling. At frequent in- 
tervals little narrow passages go winding in among 
the houses, which all along are closely conjoined, and 
seem to have no access or exit, except through the 
shops, or into these narrow passages, where you can 
touch each side with your elbows, and the top with 
your hand. We penetrated into one or two of them, 
and they smelt anciently and disagreeably. At one 
of the doors stood a pale-looking, but cheerful and 
good-natured woman, who told us that she had come 
to that house when first married, twenty-one years be- 
fore, and had lived there ever since ; and that she felt 
as if she had been buried through the best years of 
her life. She allowed us to peep into her kitchen and 
parlor, — small, dingy, dismal, but yet not wholly des- 
titute of a home look. She said that she had seen 
two or three coffins in a day, during cholera times, 
carried out of that narrow passage into which her 
door opened. These avenues put me in mind of those 
which run through ant-hills, or those which a mole 
makes underground. This fashion of Rows does not 
appear to be going out; and,. for aught I can see, it 
may last hundreds of years longer. When a house 



1853.] CHESTER. 455 

becomes so old as to be untenantable, it is rebuilt, and 
the new one is fashioned like the old, so far as regards 
the walk running through its front. Many of the 
shops are very good, and even elegant, and these 
Rows are the favorite places of business in Chester. 
Indeed, they have many advantages, the passengers 
being sheltered from the rain, and there being within 
the shops that dimmer light by which tradesmen like 
to exhibit their wares. 

A large proportion of the edifices in the Rows must 
be comparatively modern ; but there are some very an- 
cient ones, with oaken frames visible on the exterior. 
The Row, passing through these houses, is railed with 
oak, so old that it has turned black, and grown to be 
as hard as stone, which it might be mistaken for, if 
one did not see where names and initials have been 
cut into it with knives at some by-gone period. Over- 
head, cross-beams project through the ceiling so low 
as almost to hit the head. On the front of one of 
these buildings was the inscription, " GOD'S Provi- 
dence is mine Inheritance," said to have been put 
there by the occupant of the house two hundred years 
ago, when the plague spared this one house only in 
the whole city. Not improbably the inscription has 
operated as a safeguard to prevent the demolition of 
the house hitherto ; but a shopman of an adjacent 
dwelling told us that it was soon to be taken down. 

Here and there, about some of the streets through 
which the Rows do not run, we saw houses of very 
aged aspect, with steep, peaked gables. The front 
gable-end was supported on stone pillars, and the side- 
walk passed beneath. Most of these old houses 
seemed to be taverns, — the Black Bear, the Green 
Dragon, and such names. We thought of dining at 



456 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

one of them, but, on inspection, they looked rather too 
dingy and close, and of questionable neatness. So we 
went to the Royal Hotel, where we probably fared just 
as badly at much more expense, and where there was 
a particularly gruff and crabbed old waiter, who, I 
suppose, thought himself free to display his surliness 
because we arrived at the hotel on foot. For my part, 
I love to see John Bull show himself. I must go 
again and again and again to Chester, for I suppose 
there is not a more curious place in the world. 

Mr. Ticknor, who has been staying at Rock Park 
with us since Tuesday, has steamed away in the Can- 
ada this morning. His departure seems to make me 
feel more abroad, more dissevered from my native 
country, than before. 

October 2>d. — Saturday evening, at six, I went to 
dine with Mr. Aiken, a wealthy merchant here, to 
meet two of the sons of Burns. There was a party 
of ten or twelve, Mr. Aiken and his two daughters in- 
cluded. The two sons of Burns have both been in the 
Indian army, and have attained the ranks of Colonel 
and Major; one having spent thirty, and the other 
twenty-seven years, in India. They are now old gen- 
tlemen of sixty and upwards, the elder with a gray 
head, the younger with a perfectly white one, — rather 
under than above the middle stature, and with a Brit- 
ish roundness of figure, — plain, respectable, intelli- 
gent-looking persons, with quiet manners. I saw no 
resemblance in either of them to any portrait of their 
father. After the ladies left the table, I sat next to 
the Major, the younger of the two, and had a good 
deal of talk with him. He seemed a very kindly and 
social man, and was quite ready to speak about his 



1853.] LIVERPOOL. 457 

father, nor was he at all reluctant to let it be seen how 
much he valued the glory of being descended from the 
poet. By and by, at Mr. Aiken's instance, he sang 
one of Burns's songs, — the one about " Annie " and 
the " rigs of barley." He sings in a perfectly simple 
style, so that it is little more than a recitative, and yet 
the effect is very good as to humor, sense, and pathos. 
After rejoining the ladies, he sang another, " A posie 
for my ain dear May," and likewise " A man 's a man 
for a' that." My admiration of his father, and partly, 
perhaps, my being an American, gained me some 
favor with him, and he promised to give me what he 
considered the best engraving of Burns, and some 
other remembrance of him. The Major is that son 
of Burns who spent an evening at Abbotsford with 
Sir Walter Scott, when, as Lockhart writes, " the 
children sang the ballads of their sires." He spoke 
with vast indignation of a recent edition of his fa- 
ther's works by Robert Chambers, in which the latter 
appears to have wronged the poet by some misstate- 
ments. ... I liked them both and they liked me, 
and asked me to go and see them at Cheltenham, 
where they reside. We broke up at about midnight. 

The members of this dinner-party were of the more 
liberal tone of thinking here in Liverpool. The Col- 
onel and Major seemed to be of similar principles; 
and the eyes of the latter glowed when he sang his fa- 
ther's noble verse, " The rank is but the guinea's 
stamp," etc. It would have been too pitiable if Burns 
had left a son who could not feel the spirit of that 
verse. 

October Sth. — Coming to my office, two or three 
mornings ago, I found Mrs. . the mother of Mr. 



458 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853, 
-, the insane young man of whom I had taken 



charge. She is a lady of fifty or thereabouts, and not 
very remarkable anyway, nor particularly lady-like. 
However, she was just come off a rapid journey, hav- 
ing travelled from Naples, with three small children, 
without taking rest, since my letter reached her. A 
son 1 of about twenty had come with her to the Con- 
sulate. She was, of course, infinitely grieved about 
the young man's insanity, and had two or three bursts 
of tears while we talked the matter over. She said 
he was the hope of her life, — the best, purest, most 
innocent child that ever was, and wholly free from 
every kind of vice. . . . But it appears that he had 
a previous attack of insanity, lasting three months, 
about three years ago. 

After I had told her all I knew about him, includ- 
ing my personal observations at a visit a week or two 
since, we drove in a cab to the Asylum. It must have 
been a dismal moment to the poor lady, as we entered 
the gateway through a tall, prison-like wall. Being 
ushered into the parlor, the Governor soon appeared, 

and informed us that Mr. had had a relapse 

within a few days, and was not so well as when I saw 
him. He complains of unjust confinement, and seems 
to consider himself, if I rightly understand, under per- 
secution for political reasons. The Governor, how- 
ever, proposed to call him down, and I took my leave, 
feeling that it would be indelicate to be present at his 
first interview with his mother. So here ended my 
guardianship of the poor young fellow. 

In the afternoon I called at the Waterloo Hotel, 

where Mrs. was staying, and found her in the 

coffee-room with the children. She had determined 

1 This proved to be her new husband. 



1853.] LIVERPOOL. 459 

to take a lodging in the vicinity of the Asylum, and 
was going to remove thither as soon as the children 
had had something to eat. They seemed to be pleas- 
ant and well-behaved children, and impressed me more 
favorably than the mother, whom I suspect to be 
rather a foolish woman, although her present grief 
makes her appear in a more respectable light than at 
other times. She seemed anxious to impress me with 
the respectability and distinction of her connections in 
America, and I had observed the same tendency in the 
insane patient, at my interview with him. However, 
she has undoubtedly a mother's love for this poor shat- 
terbrain, and this may weigh against the folly of her 
marrying an incongruously youthful second husband, 
and many other follies. 

This was day before yesterday, and I have heard 
nothing of her since. The same day I had applica- 
tions for assistance in two other domestic affairs ; one 
from an Irishman, naturalized in America, who wished 
me to get him a passage thither, and to take charge of 
his wife and family here, at my own private expense, 
until he could remit funds to carry them across. An- 
other was from an Irishman, who had a power of at- 
torney from a countrywoman of his in America, to find 
and take charge of an infant whom she had left in the 
Liverpool workhouse, two years ago. I have a great 
mind to keep a list of all the business I am consulted 
about and employed in. It would be very curious. 
Among other things, all penniless Americans, or pre- 
tenders to Americanism, look upon me as their banker ; 
and I could ruin myself any week, if I had not laid 
down a rule to consider every applicant for assistance 
an impostor until he prove himself a true and respon- 
sible man, — which it is very difficult to do. Yester- 



460 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

day there limped in a very respectable-looking old man, 
who described himself as a citizen of Baltimore, who 
had been on a trip to England and elsewhere, and, 
being detained longer than he expected, and having 
had an attack of rheumatism, was now short of funds 
to pay his passage home, and hoped that I would sup- 
ply the deficiency. He had quite a plain, homely, 
though respectable manner, and, for aught I know, 
was the very honestest man alive ; but as he could pro- 
duce no kind of proof of his character and responsi- 
bility, I very quietly explained the impossibility of my 
helping him. I advised him to try to obtain a passage 
on board of some Baltimore ship, the master of which 
might be acquainted with him, or, at all events, take 
his word for payment, after arrival. This he seemed 
inclined to do, and took his leave. There was a de- 
cided aspect of simplicity about this old man, and yet 
I rather judge him to be an impostor. 

It is easy enough to refuse money to strangers and 
unknown people, or whenever there may be any ques- 
tion about identity ; but it will not be so easy when I 
am asked for money by persons whom I know, but do 
not like to trust. They shall meet the eternal "No," 
however. 

October V&th. — In Ormerod's history of Chester it 
is mentioned that Randal, Earl of Chester, having 
made an inroad into Wales about 1225, the Welsh- 
men gathered in mass against him, and drove him into 
the castle of Nothelert in Flintshire. The Earl sent 
for succor to the Constable of Chester, Roger Lacy, 
surnamed " Hell," on account of his fierceness. It 
was then fair-time at Chester, and the constable col- 
lected a miscellaneous rabble of fiddlers, players, cob 



1853.] LIVERPOOL. 461 

biers, tailors, and all manner of debauched people, and 
led them to the relief of the Earl. At sight of this 
strange army the Welshmen fled ; and forever after 
the Earl assigned to the constable of Chester power 
over all fiddlers, shoemakers, etc., within the bounds 
of Cheshire. The constable retained for himself and 
his heirs the control of the shoemakers; and made 
over to his own steward, Dutton, that of the fiddlers 
and players, and for many hundreds of years after- 
wards the Duttons of Dutton retained the power. On 
midsummer-day, they used to ride through Chester, 
attended by all the minstrels playing on their several 
instruments, to the Church of St. John, and there re- 
new their licenses. It is a good theme for a legend. 
Sir Peter Leycester, 'writing in Charles the Second's 
time, copies the Latin deed from the constable to Dut- 
ton ; rightly translated, it seems to mean "the mag- 
isterial power over all the lewd people ... in the 
whole of Cheshire," but the custom grew into what is 
above stated. In the time of Henry VII., the Dut- 
tons claimed, by prescriptive right, that the Cheshire 
minstrels should deliver them, at the feast of St. John, 
four bottles of wine and a lance, and that each sepa- 
rate minstrel should pay fourpence halfpenny. . . . 

Another account says Ralph Dutton was the consta- 
ble's son-in-law, and " a lusty youth." 

October l§th. — Coming to the ferry this morning 
a few minutes before the boat arrived from town, I 
went into the ferry-house, a small stone edifice, and 
found there an Irishman, his wife and three children, 
the oldest eight or nine years old, and all girls. There 
was a good fire burning in the room, and the family 
was clustered round it, apparently enjoying the warmth 



462 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

very much ; but when I went in both husband and 
wife very hospitably asked me to come to the fire, al- 
though there was not more than room at it for their 
own party. I declined, on the plea that I was warm 
enough, and then the woman said that they were very 
cold, having been long on the road. The man was 
gray-haired and gray-bearded, clad in an old drab 
overcoat, and laden with a huge bag, which seemed 
to contain bedclothing or something of the kind. The 
woman was pale, with a thin, anxious, wrinkled face, 
but with a good and kind expression. The children 
were quite pretty, with delicate faces, and a look of 
patience and endurance in them, but yet as if they had 
suffered as little as they possibly could. The two elder 
were cuddled up close to the father, the youngest, 
about four years old, sat in its mother's lap, and she 
had taken off its small shoes and stockings, and was 
warming its feet at the fire. Their little voices had a 
sweet and kindly sound as they talked in low tones 
to their parents and one another. They all looked 
very shabby, and yet had a decency about them ; and 
it was touching to see how they made themselves at 
home at this casual fireside, and got all the comfort 
they could out of the circumstances. By and by two 
or three market-women came in and looked pleasantly 
at them, and said a word or two to the children. 

They did not beg of me, as I supposed they would ; 
but after looking at them awhile, I pulled out a piece 
of silver, and handed it to one of the little girls. She 
took it very readily, as if she partly expected it, and 
then the father and mother thanked me, and said they 
had been travelling a long distance, and had nothing 
to subsist upon, except what they picked up on the 
road. They found it impossible to live in England, 



1853.] LIVERPOOL. 463 

and were now on their way to Liverpool, hoping to get 
a passage back to Ireland, where, I suppose, extreme 
poverty is rather better off than here. I heard the 
little girl say that she should buy bread with the 
money. There is not much that can be caught in the 
description of this scene ; but it made me under- 
stand, better than before, how poor people feel, wan- 
dering about in such destitute circumstances, and how 
they suffer, and yet how they have a life not quite 
miserable, after all, and how family love goes along 
with them. Soon the boat arrived at the pier, and we 
all went on board ; and as I sat in the cabin, looking 
up through a broken pane in the skylight, I saw the 
woman's thin face, with its anxious, motherly aspect ; 
and the youngest child in her arms, shrinking from 
the chill wind, but yet not impatiently ; and the eldest 
of the girls standing close by with her expression of 
childish endurance, but yet so bright and intelligent 
that it would evidently take but a few days to make a 
happy and playful child of her. I got into the inte- 
rior of this poor family, and understand, through sym- 
pathy, more of them than I can tell. I am getting to 
possess some of the English indifference as to beggars 
and poor people ; but still, whenever I come face to 
face with them, and have any intercourse, it seems as 
if they ought to be the better for me. I wish, instead 
of sixpence, I had given the poor family ten shillings, 
and denied it to a begging subscriptionist, who has 
just fleeced me to that amount. How silly a man feels 
in this latter predicament ! 

I have had a good many visitors at the Consulate 
from the United States within a short time, — among 
others, Mr. D. D. Barnard, our late minister to Ber- 
lin, returning homeward to-day by the Arctic ; and 



464 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

Mr. Sickles, Secretary of Legation to London, a 
fine-looking, intelligent, gentlemanly young man. . . . 
With him came Judge Douglas, the chosen man of 
Young America. He is very short, extremely short, 
but has an uncommonly good head, and uncommon 
dignity without seeming to aim at it, being free and 
simple in manners. I judge him to be a very able 
man, with the Western sociability and free-fellowship. 
Generally I see no reason to be ashamed of my coun- 
trymen who come out here in public position, or other- 
wise assuming the rank of gentlemen. 

October 20th. — One sees incidents in the streets 
here, occasionally, which could not be seen in an Amer- 
ican city. For instance, a week or two since, I was 
passing a quiet-looking, elderly gentleman, when, all 
of a sudden, without any apparent provocation, he up- 
lifted his stick, and struck a black-gowned boy a smart 
blow on the shoulders. The boy looked at him wof ully 
and resentfully, but said nothing, nor can I imagine 
why the thing was done. In Tythebarne Street to-day 
I saw a woman suddenly assault a man, clutch at his 
hair, and cuff him about the ears. The man, who was 
of decent aspect enough, immediately took to his heels, 
full speed, and the woman ran after him, and, as far 
as I could discern the pair, the chase continued. 

October 22d. — At a dinner-party at Mr. Holland's 
last evening, a gentleman, in instance of Charles Dick- 
ens's unweariability, said that during some theatrical 
performances in Liverpool he acted in play and farce, 
spent the rest of the night making speeches, feasting, 
and drinking at table, and ended at seven o'clock in 
the morning by jumping leap-frog over the backs of 
the whole company. 



1853.] LIVERPOOL. 465 

In Moore's diary he mentions a beautiful Guernsey 
lily having been given to his wife, and says that the 
flower was originally from Guernsey. A ship from 
there had been wrecked on the coast of Japan, having 
many of the lilies on board, and the next year the 
flowers appeared, — springing up, I suppose, on the 
wave-beaten strand. 

Wishing to send a letter to a dead man, who may 
be supposed to have gone to Tophet, — throw it into 
the fire. 

Sir Arthur Aston had his brains beaten out with 
his own wooden leg, at the storming of Tredagh, in 
Ireland, by Cromwell. 

In the county of Cheshire, many centuries ago, 
there lived a half-idiot, named Nixon, who had the 
gift of prophecy, and made many predictions about 
places, families, and important public events, since 
fulfilled. He seems to have fallen into fits of insensi^ 
bility previous to uttering his prophecies. 

The family of Mainwaring (pronounced Manner- 
ing), of Bromborough, had an ass's head for a crest. 

" Richard Dawson, being sick of the plague, and 
perceiving he must die, rose out of his bed and made 
his grave, and caused his nephew to cast straw into the 
grave, which was not far from the house, and went and 
laid him down in the said grave, and caused clothes 
to be laid upon him, and so departed out of this 
world. This he did because he was a strong man, and 
heavier than his said nephew and a serving- wench were 



466 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

able to bury. He died about the 24th of August. 
Thus was I credibly told he did, 1625." This was in 
the township of Malpas, recorded in the parish register. 

At Bickley Hall, taken down a few years ago, used 
to be shown the room where the body of the Earl of 
Leicester was laid for a whole twelvemonth, — 1659 
to 1660, — he having been kept unburied all that 
time, owing to a dispute which of his heirs should pay 
his funeral expenses. 

November 5th. — We all, together with Mr. Squa- 
rey, went to Chester last Sunday, and attended the 
cathedral service. A great deal of ceremony, and not 
unimposing, but rather tedious before it was finished, 
— occupying two hours or more. The Bishop was 
present, but did nothing except to pronounce the ben- 
ediction. In America the sermon is the principal 
thing ; but here all this magnificent ceremonial of 
prayer and chanted responses and psalms and anthems 
was the setting to a short, meagre discourse, which 
would not have been considered of any account among 
the elaborate intellectual efforts of New England min- 
isters. While this was going on, the light came 
through the stained glass windows and fell upon the 
congregation, tingeiug them with crimson. After ser- 
vice we wandered about the aisles, and looked at the 
tombs and monuments, — the oldest of which was that 
of some nameless abbot, with a staff and mitre half 
obliterated from his tomb, which was under a shallow 
arch on one side of the cathedral. There were also 
marbles on the walls, and lettered stones in the pave- 
ment under our feet ; but chiefly, if not entirely, of 
modern date. We lunched at the Royal Hotel, and 



1853.] LIVERPOOL. 467 

then walked round the city walls, also crossing the 
bridge of one great arch over the Dee, and penetrating 
as far into Wales as the entrance of the Marquis of 
Westminster's Park at Eaton. It was, I think, the 
most lovely day as regards weather that I have seen in 
England. 

I passed, to-day, a man chanting a ballad in a street 
about a recent murder, in a voice that had innumer- 
able cracks in it, and was most lugubrious. The other 
day I saw a man who was reading in a loud voice what 
seemed to be an account of the late riots and loss of 
life in Wigan. He walked slowly along the street as 
he read, surrounded by a small crowd of men, women, 
and children ; and close by his elbow stalked a police- 
man, as if guarding against a disturbance. 

November 14:th. — There is a heavy dun fog on the 
river and over the city to-day, the very gloomiest at- 
mosphere that ever I was acquainted with. On the 
river the steamboats strike gongs or ring bells to give 
warning of their approach. There are lamps burning 
in the counting-rooms and lobbies of the warehouses, 
and they gleam distinctly through the windows. 

The other day, at the entrance of the market-house, 
I saw a woman sitting in a small hand-wagon, appar- 
ently for the purpose of receiving alms. There was 
no attendant at hand ; but I noticed that one or two 
persons who passed by seemed to inquire whether she 
wished her wagon to be moved. Perhaps this is her 
mode of making progress about the city, by the volun- 
tary aid of boys and other people who help to drag 
her. There is something in this — I don't yet well 
know what — that has impressed me, as if I could 



468 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [lgflb. 

make a romance out of the idea of a woman living in 
this manner a public life, and moving about by such 
means. 

November 29th. — Mr. H. A. B — — told me of his 

friend Mr. (who was formerly attache to the 

British Legation at Washington, and whom I saw at 
Concord), that his father, a clergyman, married a 
second wife. After the marriage, the noise of a cof- 
fin being nightly carried down the stairs was heard 
in the parsonage. It could be distinguished when the 
coffin reached a certain broad landing and rested 
on it. Finally, his father had to remove to another 

residence. Besides this, Mr. had had another 

ghostly experience, — having seen a dim apparition of 
an uncle at the precise instant when the latter died in 
a distant place. The attache is a credible and honor- 
able fellow, and talks of these matters as if he posi- 
tively believed them. But Ghostland lies beyond the 
jurisdiction of veracity. 

In a garden near Chester, in taking down a sum- 
mer-house, a tomb was discovered beneath it, with a 
Latin inscription to the memory of an old doctor of 
medicine, William Bentley, who had owned the place 
long ago, and died in 1680. And his dust and bones 
had lain beneath all the merry times in the summer- 
house. 

December 1st. — It is curious to observe how many 
methods people put in practice here to pick up a half- 
penny. Yesterday I saw a man standing bareheaded 
and barelegged in the mud and misty weather, playing 
on a fife, in hopes to get a circle of auditors. Nobody, 



1853.] LIVERPOOL. 469 

however, seemed to take any notice. Very often a 
whole band of musicians will strike up, — passing a 
hat round after playing a tune or two. On board the 
ferry, until the coldest weather began, there were al- 
ways some wretched musicians, with an old fiddle, an 
old clarinet, and an old verdigrised brass bugle, per- 
forming during the passage, and, as the boat neared 
the shore, sending round one of their number to gather 
contributions in the hollow of the brass bugle. They 
were a very shabby set, and must have made a very 
scanty living at best. Sometimes it was a boy with 
an accordion, and his sister, a smart little girl, with a 
timbrel, — which, being so shattered that she could 
not play on it, she used only to collect halfpence in. 
Ballad - singers, or rather chanters or croakers, are 
often to be met with in the streets, but hand-organ 
players are not more frequent than in our cities. 

I still observe little girls and other children bare- 
legged and barefooted on the wet sidewalks. There 
certainly never was anything so dismal as the Novem- 
ber weather has been ; never any real sunshine; al- 
most always a mist ; sometimes a dense fog, like 
slightly rarefied wool, pervading the atmosphere. 

An epitaph on a person buried on a hill -side in 
Cheshire, together with some others, supposed to have 
died of the plague, and therefore not admitted into 
the churchyards : — 

" Think it not strange our bones ly here, 
Thine may ly thou knowst not where." 

Elizabeth Hampson. 

These graves were near the remains of two rude stone 
crosses, the purpose of which was not certainly known, 
although they were supposed to be boundary marks. 



470 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

Probably, as the plague-corpses were debarred from 
sanctified ground, the vicinity of these crosses was 
chosen as having a sort of sanctity. 

" Bang beggar," — an old Cheshire term for a parish 
beadle. 

Hawthorne Hal], Cheshire, Macclesfield Hundred, 
Parish of Wilmslow, and within the hamlet of Morley. 
It was vested at an early period in the Lathoms of 
Irlam, Lancaster County, and passed through the 
Leighs to the Pages of Earlshaw. Thomas Leigh 
Page sold it to Mr. Ralph Bower of Wilmslow, whose 
children owned it in 1817. The Leighs built a chan- 
cel in the church of Wilmslow, where some of them 
are buried, their arms painted in the windows. The 
hall is an " ancient, respectable mansion of brick." 

December 2d. — Yesterday, a chill, misty December 
day, yet I saw a woman barefooted in the street, not to 
speak of children. 

Cold and uncertain as the weather is, there is still a 
great deal of small trade carried on in the open air. 
Women and men sit in the streets with a stock of 
combs and such small things to sell, the women knit- 
ting as if they sat by a fireside. Cheap crockery is 
laid out in the street, so far out that without any great 
deviation from the regular carriage - track a wheel 
might pass straight through it. Stalls of apples are 
innumerable, but the apples are not fit for a pig. In 
some streets herrings are very abundant, laid out on 
boards. Coals seem to be for sale by the wheelbar- 
rowful. Here and there you see children with some 
small article for sale, — as, for instance, a girl with 



1853.] LIVERPOOL, 471 

two linen caps. A somewhat overladen cart of coal 
was passing along and some small quantity of the coal 
fell off ; no sooner had the wheels passed than several 
women and children gathered to the spot, like hens 
and chickens round a handful of corn, and picked it 
up in their aprons. We have nothing similar to these 
street- women in our country. 

December 10th. — I don't know any place that 
brings all classes into contiguity on equal ground so 
completely as the waiting-room at Eock Ferry on 
these frosty days. The room is not more than eight 
feet square, with walls of stone, and wooden benches 
ranged round them, and an open stove in one corner, 
generally well furnished with coal. It is almost al- 
ways crowded, and I rather suspect that many per- 
sons who have no fireside elsewhere creep in here and 
spend the most comfortable part of their day. 

This morning, when I looked into the room, there 
were one or two gentlemen and other respectable per- 
sons ; but in the best place, close to the fire, and 
crouching almost into it, was an elderly beggar, with 
the raggedest of overcoats, two great rents in the 
shoulders of it disclosing the dingy lining, all be- 
patched with various stuff covered with dirt, and on 
his shoes and trousers the mud of an interminable pil- 
grimage. Owing to the posture in which he sat, I 
could not see his face, but only the battered crown 
and rim of the very shabbiest hat that ever was worn. 
Regardless of the presence of women (which, indeed, 
Englishmen seldom do regard when they wish to 
smoke), he was smoking a pipe of vile tobacco ; but, 
after all, this was fortunate, because the man himself 
was not personally fragrant. He was terribly squalid, 



472 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

— terribly ; and when I had a glimpse of his face, it 
well befitted the rest of his development, — grizzled, 
wrinkled, weather-beaten, yet sallow, and down-look- 
ing, with a watchful kind of eye turning upon every- 
body and everything, meeting the glances of other peo- 
ple rather boldly, yet soon shrinking away ; a long 
thin nose, a gray beard of a week's growth ; hair not 
much mixed with gray, but rusty and lifeless; — a 
miserable object ; but it was curious to see how he was 
not ashamed of himself, but seemed to feel that he was 
one of the estates of the kingdom, and had as much 
right to live as other men. He did just as he pleased, 
took the best place by the fire, nor would have cared 
though a nobleman were forced to stand aside for him. 
When the steamer's bell rang, he shouldered a large 
and heavy pack, like a pilgrim with his burden of sin, 
but certainly journeying to hell instead of heaven. On 
board he looked round for the best position, at first 
stationing himself near the boiler-pipe; but, finding 
the deck damp underfoot, he went to the cabin-door, 
and took his stand on the stairs, protected from the 
wind, but very incommodiously placed for those who 
wished to pass. All this was done without any bra- 
vado or forced impudence, but in the most quiet way, 
inerely because he was seeking his own comfort, and 
considered that he had a right to seek it. It was an 
Englishman's spirit ; but in our country, I imagine, a 
beggar considers himself a kind of outlaw, and would 
hardly assume the privileges of a man in any place 
of public resort. Here beggary is a system, and beg- 
gars are a numerous class, and make themselves, in a 
certain way, respected as such. Nobody evinced the 
slightest disapprobation of the man's proceedings. In 
America, I think, we should see many aristocratic airs 



1853.] LIVERPOOL. 473 

on such provocation, and probably the ferry people 
would there have rudely thrust the beggar aside ; giv- 
ing him a shilling, however, which no Englishman 
would ever think of doing. There would also have 
been a great deal of fun made of his squalid and rag- 
ged figure ; whereas nobody smiled at him this morn- 
ing, nor in any way showed the slightest disrespect. 
This is good ; but it is the result of a state of things 
by no means good. For many days there has been a 
great deal of fog on the river, and the boats have 
groped then* way along, continually striking their 
bells, while, on all sides, there are responses of bell 
and gong ; and the vessels at anchor look shadow-like 
as we glide past them, and the master of one steamer 
shouts a warning to the master of another which he 
meets. The Englishmen, who hate to run any risk 
without an equivalent object, show a good deal of cau- 
tion and timidity on these foggy days. 

December lStJi. — Chill, frosty weather ; such an at- 
mosphere as forebodes snow in New England, and 
there has been a little here. Yet I saw a barefooted 
young woman yesterday. The feet of these poor crea- 
tures have exactly the red complexion of their hands, 
acquired by constant exposure to the cold air. 

At the ferry-room, this morning, was a small, thin, 
anxious-looking woman, with a bundle, seeming in 
rather poor circumstances, but decently dressed, and 
eying other women, I thought, with an expression of 
slight ill-will and distrust ; also an elderly, stout, gray- 
haired woman, of respectable aspect, and two young 
lady-like persons, quite pretty, one of whom was read- 
ing a shilling volume of James's " Arabella Stuart." 
They talked to one another with that up-and-down in- 



474 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1853. 

tonation which English ladies practise, and which 
strikes an unaccustomed ear as rather affected, espe- 
cially in women of size and mass. It is very differ- 
ent from an American lady's mode of talking : there 
is the difference between color and no color ; the tone 
variegates it. One of these young ladies spoke to me, 
making some remark about the weather, — the first in- 
stance I have met with of a gentlewoman's speaking 
to an unintroduced gentleman. Besides these, a mid- 
dle-aged man of the lower class, and also a gentleman's 
out-door servant, clad in a drab great-coat, corduroy 
breeches, and drab cloth gaiters buttoned from the 
knee to the ankle. He complained to the other man 
of the cold weather ; said that a glass of whiskey, every 
half-hour, would keep a man comfortable; and, acci- 
dentally hitting his coarse foot against one of the young 
lady's feet, said, " Beg pardon, ma'am," — which she 
acknowledged with a slight movement of the head. 
Somehow or other, different classes seem to encounter 
one another in an easier manner than with us; the 
shock is less palpable. I suppose the reason is that 
the distinctions are real, and therefore need not be 
continually asserted. 

Nervous and excitable persons need to talk a great 
deal, by way of letting off their steam. 

On board the Rock Ferry steamer, a gentleman com- 
ing into the cabin, a voice addresses him from a dark 
corner, " How do you do, sir ? " — " Speak again ! " says 
the gentleman. No answer from the dark corner ; and 
the gentleman repeats, " Speak again ! " The speaker 
now comes out of the dark corner, and sits down in a 
place where he can be seen. " Ah ! " cries the gentle- 



1853] LIVERPOOL. 475 

man, " very well, I thank you. How do you do ? 1 
did not recognize your voice." Observable, the Eng- 
lish caution, shown in the gentleman's not vouchsafing 
to say, "Very well, thank you!" till he knew his man. 

What was the after life of the young man, whon 
Jesus, looking on, " loved," and bade him sell all that 
he had, and give to the poor, and take up his cross and 
follow him? Something very deep and beautiful might 
be made out of this. 

December 31s£. — Among the beggars of Liverpool, 
the hardest to encounter is a man without any legs, 
and, if I mistake not, likewise deficient in arms. You 
see him before you all at once, as if he had sprouted 
half-way out of the earth, and would sink down and 
reappear in some other place the moment he has done 
with you. His countenance is large, fresh, and very 
intelligent ; but his great power lies in his fixed gaze, 
which is inconceivably difficult to bear. He never once 
removes his eye from you till you are quite past his 
range ; and you feel it all the same, although you do 
not meet his glance. He is perfectly respectful ; but 
the intentness and directness of his silent appeal is far 
worse than any impudence. In fact, it is the very 
flower of impudence. I would rather go a mile about 
than pass before his battery. I feel wronged by him, 
and yet unutterably ashamed. There must be great 
force ill the man to produce such an effect. There is 
nothing of the customary squalidness of beggary about 
him, but remarkable trimness and cleanliness. A girl 
of twenty or thereabouts, who vagabondizes about the 
city on her hands and knees, possesses, to a consider- 
able degree, the same characteristics. I think they hit 



476 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

their victims the more effectually from being below the 
common level of vision. 

January 3c?, 1854. — Night before last there was a 
fall of snow, about three or four inches, and, following 
it, a pretty hard frost. On the river, the vessels at 
anchor showed the snow along their yards, and on 
every ledge where it could lie. A blue sky and sun- 
shine overhead, and apparently a clear atmosphere 
close at hand ; but in the distance a mistiness became 
perceptible, obscuring the shores of the river, and mak- 
ing the vessels look dim and uncertain. The steamers 
were ploughing along, smoking their pipes through the 
frosty air. On the landing stage and in the streets, 
hard-trodden snow, looking more like my New Eng- 
land home than anything I have yet seen. Last night 
the thermometer fell as low as 13°, nor probably is it 
above 20° to-day. No such frost has been known in 
England these forty years ! and Mr. Wilding tells me 
that he never saw so much snow before. 

January 6th. — I saw, yesterday, stopping at a cab- 
inet-maker's shop in Church Street, a coach with four 
beautiful white horses, and a postilion on each near- 
horse ; behind, in the dicky, a footman ; and on the 
box a coachman, all dressed in livery. The coach-panel 
bore a coat of arms with a coronet, and I presume it 
must have been the equipage of the Earl of Derby. 
A crowd of people stood round, gazing at the coach 
and horses ; and when any of them spoke, it was in a 
lower tone than usual. I doubt not they all had a kind 
of enjoyment of the spectacle, for these English are 
strangely proud of having a class above them. 



1854.] LIVERPOOL. 477 

Every Englishman runs to " The Times " with his 
little grievance, as a child runs to his mother. 

I was sent for to the police court the other morning, 
in the case of an American sailor accused of robbing 
a shipmate at sea. A large room, with a great coal- 
fire burning on one side, and above it, the portrait of 
Mr. Rushton, deceased, a magistrate of many years' 
continuance. A long table, with chairs, and a wit- 
ness-box. One of the borough magistrates, a merchant 
of the city, sat at the head of the table, with paper and 
pen and ink before him ; but the real judge was the 
clerk of the court, whose professional knowledge and 
experience governed all the proceedings. In the short 
time while I was waiting, two cases were tried, in the 
first of which the prisoner was discharged. The sec- 
ond case was of a woman, — a thin, sallow, hard-look- 
ing, careworn, rather young woman, — for stealing a 
pair of slippers out of a shop. The trial occupied five 
minutes or less, and she was sentenced to twenty-one 
days' imprisonment, — whereupon, without speaking, 
she looked up wildly first into one policeman's face, 
then into another's, at the same time wringing her 
hands with no theatric gesture, but because her tor- 
ment took this outward shape, — and was led away. 
The Yankee sailor was then brought up, — an intelli- 
gent, but ruffian-like fellow, — and as the case was out 
of the jurisdiction of the English magistrates, and as 
it was not worth while to get him sent over to Amer- 
ica for trial, he was forthwith discharged. He stole 
a comforter. 

If mankind were all intellect, they would be con- 
tinually changing, so that one age would be entirely 



478 ENGDSH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

unlike another. The great conservative is the heart, 
which remains the same in all ages ; so that common- 
places of a thousand years' standing are as effective as 
ever. 

Monday, February 20£A. — At the police court on 
Saturday, I attended the case of the second mate and 
four seamen of the John and Albert, for assaulting, 
beating, and stabbing the chief mate. The chief mate 
has been in the hospital ever since the assault, and 
was brought into the court to-day to give evidence, — 
a man of thirty, black hair, black eyes, a dark com- 
plexion, disagreeable expression ; sallow, emaciated, 
feeble, apparently in pain, one arm disabled. He sat 
bent and drawn upward, and had evidently been se- 
verely hurt, and was not yet fit to be out of bed. He 
had some brandy-and-water to enable him to sustain 
himself. He gave his evidence very clearly, beginning 
(sailor-like) with telling in what quarter the wind was 
at the time of the assault, and which sail was taken 
in. His testimony bore on one man only, at whom he 
cast a vindictive look ; but I think he told the truth 
as far as he knew and remembered it. Of the prison- 
ers the second mate was a mere youth, with long, 
sandy hair, and an intelligent and not unprepossessing 
face, dressed as neatly as a three or four weeks' cap- 
ture, with small or no means, could well allow, in a 
frock-coat, and with clean linen, — the only linen or 
cotton shirt in the company. The other four were 
rude, brutish sailors, in flannel or red-baize shirts. 
Three of them appeared to give themselves little con- 
cern; but the fourth, a red-haired and red-bearded 
man, — Paraman, by name, — evidently felt the press* 
ure of the case upon himself. He was the one whom 



1854.] LIVERPOOL. 479 

the mate swore to have given him the first blow ; and 
there was other evidence of his having been stabbed 
with a knife. The captain of the ship, the pilot, the 
cook, and the steward, all gave their evidence ; and the 
general bearing of it was, that the chief mate had a 
devilish temper, and had misused the second mate and 
crew, — that the four seamen had attacked him, and 
that Par am an had stabbed him ; while all but the stew- 
ard concurred in saying that the second mate had taken 
no part in the affray. The steward, however, swore to 
having seen him strike the chief mate with a wooden 
marline-spike, which was broken by the blow. The 
magistrate dismissed all but Paraman, whom I am to 
send to America for trial. In my opinion the chief 
mate got pretty nearly what he deserved, under the 
code of natural justice. While business was going for- 
ward, the magistrate, Mr. Mansfield, talked about a 
fancy ball at which he had been present the evening 
before, and of other matters grave and gay. It was 
very informal ; we sat at the table, or stood with our 
backs to the fire ; policemen came and went ; wit- 
nesses were sworn on the greasiest copy of the Gos- 
pels I ever saw, polluted by hundreds and thousands 
of perjured kisses ; and for hours the prisoners were 
kept standing at the foot of the table, interested to the 
full extent of their capacity, while all others were in- 
different. At the close of the case, the police officers 
and witnesses applied to me about their expenses. 

Yesterday I took a walk with my wife and two chil- 
dren to Bebbington Church. A beautifully sunny 
morning. My wife and U. attended church, J. and I 
continued our walk. When we were at a little dis- 
tance from the church, the bells suddenly chimed out 
with a most cheerful sound, and sunny as the morning. 



480 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

It is a pity we have no chimes of bells, to give the 
churchward summons, at home. People were stand- 
ing about the ancient church-porch and among the 
tombstones. In the course of our walk, we passed 
many old thatched cottages, built of stone, and with 
what looked like a cow-house or pigsty at one end, 
making part of the cottage ; also an old stone farm- 
house, which may have been a residence of gentility 
in its day. We passed, too, a small Methodist chapel, 
making one of a row of low brick edifices. There was 
a sound of prayer within. I never saw a more unbeau- 
tiful place of worship ; and it had not even a separate 
existence for itself, the adjoining tenement being an 
alehouse. 

The grass along the wayside was green, with a few 
daisies. There was green holly in the hedges, and we 
passed through a wood, up some of the tree-trunks of 
which ran clustering ivy. 

February 23d. — There came to see me the other 
day a young gentleman with a mustache and a blue 
cloak, who announced himself as William Allingham, 
and handed me a copy of his poems, a thin volume, 
with paper covers, published by Koutledge. I thought 
I remembered hearing his name, but had never seen 
any of his works. His face was intelligent, dark, 
pleasing, and not at all John-Bullish. He said that 
he had been employed in the Customs in Ireland, and 
was now going to London to live by literature, — to 
be connected with some newspaper, I imagine. He 
had been in London before, and was acquainted with 
some of the principal literary people, — among others, 
Tennyson and Carlyle. He seemed to have been on 
rather intimate terms with Tennyson. . . . We talked 



1854.] LIVERPOOL. 481 

awhile in my dingy and dusky Consulate, and he then 
took leave. His manners are good, and he appears to 
possess independence of mind. . . . 

Yesterday I saw a British regiment march down to 
George's Pier, to embark in the Niagara for Malta. 
The troops had nothing very remarkable about them ; 
but the thousands of ragged and squalid wretches, who 
thronged the pier and streets to gaze on them, were 
what I had not seen before in such masses. This was 
the first populace I ever beheld ; for even the Irish, on 
the other side of the water, acquire a respectability of 
aspect. John Bull is going with his whole heart into 
the Turkish war. He is very foolish. Whatever the 
Czar may propose to himself, it is for the interest of 
democracy that he should not be easily put down. The 
regiment, on its way to embark, carried the Queen's 
colors, and, side by side with them, the banner of the 
28th, — yellow, with the names of the Peninsular and 
other battles in which it had been engaged inscribed 
on it in a double column. It is a very distinguished 
regiment ; and Mr. Henry Bright mentioned, as one 
of its distinctions, that Washington had formerly been 
an officer in it. I never heard of this. 



February 21th. — We walked to Woodside in the 
pleasant forenoon, and thence crossed to Liverpool. 
On our way to Woodside, we saw the remains of the 
old Birkenhead Priory, built of the common red free- 
stone, much time-worn, with ivy creeping over it, and 
birds evidently at home in its old crevices. These 
ruins are pretty extensive, and seem to be the remains 
of a quadrangle. A handsome modern church, like- 
wise of the same red freestone, has been built on part 

VOL. VII. 81 



482 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

of the site occupied by the Priory ; and the organ was 
sounding within while we walked about the premises. 
On some of the ancient arches, there were grotesquely 
carved stone faces. The old walls have been suffi- 
ciently restored to make them secure, without destroy- 
ing their venerable aspect. It is a very interesting 
spot ; and so much the more so because a modern 
town, with its brick and stone houses, its flags and 
pavements, has sprung up about the ruins, which were 
new a thousand years ago. The station of the Ches- 
ter railway is within a hundred yards. Formerly the 
Monks of this Priory kept the only ferry that then 
existed on the Mersey. 

At a dinner at Mr. Bramley Moore's a little while 
ago, we had a prairie-hen from the West of America. 
It was a very delicate bird, and a gentleman carved it 
most skilfully to a dozen guests, and had still a second 
slice to offer to them. 

Aboard the ferry-boat, yesterday, there was a labor- 
ing man eating oysters. He took them one by one 
from his pocket in interminable succession, opened 
them with his jack-knife, swallowed each one, threw 
the shell overboard, and then sought for another. Hav- 
ing concluded his meal, he took out a clay tobacco- 
pipe, filled it, lighted it with a match, and smoked it, 
— all this while the other passengers were looking at 
him, and with a perfect coolness and independence, 
such as no single man can ever feel in America. Here 
a man does not seem to consider what other people 
will think of his conduct, but only whether it suits his 
own convenience to do so and so. It may be the bettez 
way. 



i854.] LIVERPOOL, 483 

A French military man, a veteran of all Napoleon's 
wars, is now living, with a false leg and arm, both 
movable by springs, false teeth, a false eye, a silver 
nose with a flesh-colored covering, and a silver plate 
replacing part of the skull. He has the cross of the 
Legion of Honor. 

March lSth. — On Saturday I went with Mr. B 

to the Dingle, a pleasant domain on the banks of the 
Mersey almost opposite to Rock Ferry. Walking 
home, we looked into Mr. Thorn's Unitarian Chapel, 

Mr. B 's family's place of worship. There is a 

little graveyard connected with the chapel, a most un- 
inviting and unpicturesque square of ground, perhaps 
thirty or forty yards across, in the midst of back 
fronts of city buildings. About half the space was 
occupied by flat tombstones, level with the ground, 
the remainder being yet vacant. Nevertheless, there 
were perhaps more names of men generally known to 
the world on these few tombstones than in any other 
churchyard in Liverpool, — Roscoe, Blanco White, 
and the Rev. William Enfield, whose name has a 
classical sound in my ears, because, when a little boy, 
I used to read his "Speaker" at school. In the vestry 
of the chapel there were many books, chiefly old theo- 
logical works, in ancient print and binding, much mil- 
dewed and injured by the damp. The body of the 
chapel is neat, but plain, and, being not very large, 
has a kind of social and family aspect, as if the cler- 
gyman and his people must needs have intimate rela- 
tions among themselves. The Unitarian sect in Liver- 
pool have, as a body, great wealth and respectability. 

Yesterday I walked with my wife and children to 
the brow of a hill, overlooking Birkenhead and Tran- 



484 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

mere, and commanding a fine view of the river, and 
Liverpool beyond. All round about new and neat res- 
idences for city people are springing up, with fine 
names, — Eldon Terrace, Rose Cottage, Belvoir Villa, 
etc., etc., with little patches of ornamented garden or 
lawn in front, and heaps of curious rock-work, with 
which the English are ridiculously fond of adorning 
their front yards. I rather think the middling classes 
— meaning shopkeepers, and other respectabilities of 
that level — are better lodged here than in America; 
and, what I did not expect, the houses are a great 
deal newer than in our new country. Of course, this 
can only be the case in places circumstanced like Liv- 
erpool and its suburbs. But, scattered among these 
modern villas, there are old stone cottages of the rud- 
est structure, and doubtless hundreds of years old, 
with thatched roofs, into which the grass has rooted 
itself, and now looks verdant. These cottages are in 
themselves as ugly as possible, resembling a large kind 
of pigsty; but often, by dint of the verdure on their 
thatch and the shrubbery clustering about them, they 
look picturesque. 

The old - fashioned flowers in the gardens of New 
England — blue - bells, crocuses, primroses, foxglove, 
and many others — appear to be wild flowers here on 
English soil. There is something very touching and 
pretty in this fact, that the Puritans should have 
carried their field and hedge flowers, and nurtured 
them in their gardens, until, to us, they seem entirely 
the product of cultivation. 

March 16th. — Yesterday, at the coroner's court, at- 
tending the inquest on a black sailor who died on 
board an American vessel, after her arrival at this 



1854.] LIVERPOOL. 485 

port. The court -room is capable of accommodating 
perhaps fifty people, dingy, with a pyramidal skylight 
above, and a single window on one side, opening into 
a gloomy back court. A private room, also lighted 
with a pyramidal skylight, is behind the court-room, 
into which I was asked, and found the coroner, a gray- 
headed, grave, intelligent, broad, red-faced man, with 
an air of some authority, well mannered and dignified, 
but not exactly a gentleman, — dressed in a blue coat, 
with a black cravat, showing a shirt-collar above it. 
Considering how many and what a varietjr of cases of 
the ugliest death are constantly coining before him, he 
was much more cheerful than could be expected, and 
had a kind of formality and orderliness which I sup- 
pose balances the exceptionalities with which he has 
to deal. In the private room with him was likewise 
the surgeon, who professionally attends the court. 
We chatted about suicide and such matters, — the 
surgeon, the coroner, and I, — until the American case 
was ready, when we adjourned to the court-room, and 
the coroner began the examination. The American 
captain was a rude, uncouth Down-Easter, about thirty 
years old, and sat on a bench, doubled and bent into 
an indescribable attitude, out of which he occasionally 
straightened himself, all the time toying with a ruler, 
or some such article. The case was one of no inter- 
est ; the man had been frost-bitten, and died from nat- 
ural causes, so that no censure was deserved or passed 
upon the captain. The jury, who had been examining 
the body, were at first inclined to think that the man 
had not been frost-bitten, but that his feet had been 
immersed in boiling water ; but, on explanation by the 
surgeon, readily yielded their opinion, and gave the 
verdict which the coroner put into their mouths, ex- 



486 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

culpating the captain from all blame. In fact, it is 
utterly impossible that a jury of chance individuals 
should not be entirely governed by the judgment of so 
experienced and weighty a man as the coroner. In 
the court -room were two or three police officers in 
uniform, and some other officials, a very few idle spec- 
tators, and a few witnesses waiting to be examined. 
And while the case was going forward, a poor-looking 
woman came in, and I heard her, in an undertone, 
telling an attendant of a death that had just occurred. 
The attendant received the communication in a very 
quiet and matter-of-course way, said that it should be 
attended to, and the woman retired. 

The Diary of a Coroner would be a work likely 
to meet with large popular acceptance. A dark pas- 
sageway, only a few yards in extent, leads from the 
liveliest street in Liverpool to this coroner's court- 
room, where all the discussion is about murder and 
suicide. It seems, that, after a verdict of suicide the 
corpse can only be buried at midnight, without relig- 
ious rites. 

" His lines are cast in pleasant places," — applied 
to a successful angler. 

A woman's chastity consists, like an onion, of a 
series of coats. You may strip off the outer ones 
without doing much mischief, perhaps none at all; 
but you keep taking off one after another, in expecta- 
tion of coming to the inner nucleus, including the 
whole value of the matter. It proves, however, that 
there is no such nucleus, and that chastity is diffused 
through the whole series of coats, is lessened with 
the removal of each, and vanishes with the final ons 



1854] LIVERPOOL. 487 

which you supposed would introduce you to the hid- 
den pearl. 

March 23c?. — Mr. B. and I took a cab Saturday 
afternoon, and drove out of the city in the direction 
of Knowsley. On our way we saw many gentlemen's 
or rich people's places, some of them dignified with 
the title of Halls, — with lodges at their gates, and 
standing considerably removed from the road. The 
greater part of them were built of brick, — a material 
with which I have not been accustomed to associate 
ideas of grandeur; but it was much in use here in 
Lancashire, in the Elizabethan age, — more, I think, 
than now. These suburban residences, however, are of 
much later date than Elizabeth's time. Among other 
places, Mr. B. called at the Hazels, the residence of 
Sir Thomas Birch, a kinsman of his. It is a large 
brick mansion, and has old trees and shrubbery about 
it, the latter very fine and verdant, — hazels, holly, 
rhododendron, etc. Mr. B. went in, and shortly after- 
wards Sir Thomas Birch came out, — a very frank 
and hospitable gentleman, — and pressed me to enter 
and take luncheon, which latter hospitality I declined. 

His house is in very nice order. He had a good 
many pictures, and, amongst them, a small portrait of 
his mother, painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence, when a 
youth. It is unfinished, and when the painter was at 
the height of his fame, he was asked to finish it. But 
Lawrence, after looking at the picture, refused to re- 
touch it, saying that there was a merit in this early 
sketch which he could no longer attain. It was really 
a very beautiful picture of a lovely woman. 

Sir Thomas Birch proposed to go with us and get 



488 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

us admittance into Knowsley Park, where we could 
not possibly find entrance without his aid. So we 
went to the stables, where the old groom had already 
shown hospitality to our cabman, by giving his horse 
some provender, and himself some beer. There seemed 
to be a kindly and familiar sort of intercourse between 
the old servant and the Baronet, — each of them, I 
presume, looking on their connection as indissoluble. 

The gate-warden of Knowsley Park was an old wo- 
man, who readily gave us admittance at Sir Thomas 
Birch's request. The family of the Earl of Derby is 
not now at the Park. ... It was a very bad time of 
year to see it ; the trees just showing the earliest 
symptoms of vitality, while whole acres of ground 
were covered with large, dry, brown ferns, —which I 
suppose are very beautiful when green. Two or three 
hares scampered out of these ferns, and sat on their 
hind legs looking about them, as we drove by. A 
sheet of water had been drawn off, in order to deepen 
its bed. The oaks did not seem to me so magnificent 
as they should be in an ancient noble property like 
this. A century does not accomplish so much for a 
tree, in this slow region, as it does in ours. I think, 
however, that they were more individual and pictur- 
esque, with more character in their contorted trunks ; 
therein somewhat resembling apple-trees. Our forest- 
trees have a great sameness of character, like our 
people, — because one and the other grow too closely. 

In one part of the Park we came to a small tower, 
for what purpose I know not, unless as an observa- 
tory; and near it was a marble statue on a high pedes- 
tal. The statue had been long exposed to the weather, 
and was overgrown and ingrained with moss and li- 
chens, so that its classic beauty was in some sort goth 



1854.] LIVERPOOL. 489 

icized, A half-mile or so from this point, we saw the 
mansion of Knowsley, in the midst of a very fine pros- 
pect, with a tolerably high ridge of hills in the dis- 
tance. The house itself is exceedingly vast, a front 
and two wings, with suites of rooms, I suppose, inter- 
minable. The oldest part, Sir Thomas Birch told us, 
is a tower of the time of Henry VII. Nevertheless, 
the effect is not overwhelming, because the edifice 
looks low in proportion to its great extent over the 
ground ; and, besides, a good deal of it is built of brick, 
with white window-frames, so that, looking at separate 
parts, I might think them American structures, with- 
out the smart addition of green Venetian blinds, so uni- 
versal with us. Portions, however, were built of red 
freestone ; and if I had looked at it longer, no doubt I 
should have admired it more. We merely drove round 
it from the rear to the front. It stands in my memory 
rather like a college or a hospital, than as the ancestral 
residence of a great English noble. 

We left the Park in another direction, and passed 
through a part of Lord Sefton's property, by a private 
road. 

By the by, we saw half a dozen policemen, in their 
blue coats and embroidered collars, after entering 
Knowsley Park; but the Earl's own servants would 
probably have supplied their place, had the family 
been at home. The mansion of Croxteth, the seat of 
Lord Sefton, stands near the public road, and, though 
large, looked of rather narrow compass after Knows- 
ley. 

The rooks were talking together very loquaciously 
b the high tops of the trees near Sir Thomas Birch's 
house, it being now their building-time. It was a very 



490 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854 

pleasant sound, the noise being comfortably softened 
by the remote height. Sir Thomas said that more than 
half a century ago the rooks used to inhabit another 
grove of lofty trees, close in front of the house ; but 
being noisy, and not altogether cleanly in their hab- 
its, the ladies of the family grew weary of them and 
wished to remove them. Accordingly, the colony was 
driven away, and made their present settlement in a 
grove behind the house. Ever since that time not a 
rook has built in the ancient grove ; every year, how- 
ever, one or another pair of young rooks attempt to 
build among the deserted tree-tops, but the old rooks 
tear the new nest to pieces as often as it is put to- 
gether. Thus, either the memory of aged individual 
rooks or an authenticated tradition in their society has 
preserved the idea that the old grove is forbidden and 
inauspicious to them. 

A son of General Arnold, named William Fitch 
Arnold, and born in 1794, now possesses the estate 
of Little Messenden Abbey, Bucks County, and is a 
magistrate for that county. He was formerly Captain 
of the 19th Lancers. He has now two sons and four 
daughters. The other three sons of General Arnold, 
all older than this one, and all military men, do not 
appear to have left children ; but a daughter married 
to Colonel Phipps, of the Mulgrave family, has a son 
and two daughters. I question whether any of our 
true-hearted Revolutionary heroes have left a more 
prosperous progeny than this arch-traitor. I should 
like to know their feelings with respect to their an« 
cestor. 

April 3d. — I walked with J , two days ago, t* 



1854. J LIVERPOOL. 491 

Eastham, a village on the road to Chester, and five or 
six miles from Rock Ferry. On our way we passed 
through a village, in the centre of which was a small 
stone pillar, standing on a pedestal of several steps, on 
which children were sitting and playing. I take it to 
have been an old Catholic cross ; at least, I know not 
what else it is. It seemed very ancient. Eastham is 
the finest old English village I have seen, with many 
antique houses, and with altogether a rural and pic- 
turesque aspect, unlike anything in America, and yet 
possessing a familiar look, as if it were something I 
had dreamed about. There were thatched stone cot- 
tages intermixed with houses of a better kind, and 
likewise a gateway and gravelled walk, that perhaps 
gave admittance to the Squire's mansion. It was not 
merely one long, wide street, as in most New England 
villages, but there were several crooked ways, gathering 
the whole settlement into a pretty small compass. In 
the midst of it stood a venerable church of the com- 
mon red freestone, with a most reverend air, consider- 
ably smaller than that of Bebbington, but more beau- 
tiful and looking quite as old. There was ivy on its 
spire and elsewhere. It looked very quiet and peace- 
ful, and as if it had received the people into its low 
arched door every Sabbath for many centuries. There 
were many tombstones about it, some level with the 
ground, some raised on blocks of stone, on low pillars, 
nioss - grown and weather-worn ; and probably these 
were but the successors of other stones that had quite 
crumbled away, or been buried by the accumulation 
of dead men's dust above them. In the centre of the 
churchyard stood an old yew-tree, with immense trunk, 
which was all decayed within, sc that it is a wonder 
how the tree retains any life, — which, nevertheless, it 



492 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

does. It was called " the old Yew of Eastham," six 
hundred years ago ! 

After passing through the churchyard, we saw the 
village inn on the other side. The doors were fastened, 
but a girl peeped out of the window at us, and let us 
in, ushering us into a very neat parlor. There was a 
cheerful fire in the grate, a straw carpet on the floor, 
a mahogany sideboard, and a mahogany table in the 
middle of the room ; and, on the walls, the portraits 
of mine host (no doubt) and of his wife and daughters, 
— a very nice parlor, and looking like what I might 
have found in a country tavern at home, only this was 
an ancient house, and there is nothing at home like 
the glimpse, from the window, of the church, and its 
red, ivy-grown tower. I ordered some lunch, being 
waited on by the girl, who was very neat, intelligent, 
and comely, — and more respectful than a New Eng- 
land maid. As we came out of the inn, some village 
urchins left their play, and ran to me begging, calling 
me " Master ! " They turned at once from play to 
begging, and, as I gave them nothing, they turned to 
their play again. 

This village is too far from Liverpool to have been 
much injured as yet by the novelty of cockney resi- 
dences, which have grown up almost everywhere else, 
so far as I have visited. About a mile from it, how- 
ever, is the landing-place of a steamer (which runs 
regularly, except in the winter months), where a large, 
new hotel is built. The grounds about it are extensive 
and well wooded. We got some biscuits at the hotel, 
and I gave the waiter (a splendid gentleman in black) 
four halfpence, being the surplus of a shilling. He 
bowed and thanked me very humbly. An American 
does not easily bring his mind to the small measure 



1854,] LIVERPOOL. 493 

of English liberality to servants ; if anything is to be 
given, we are ashamed not to give more, especially to 
clerical-looking persons, in black suits and white neck- 
cloths. 

I stood on the Exchange at noon, to-day, to see the 
88th Regiment, the Connaught Rangers, marching 
down to embark for the East. They were a body of 
young, healthy, and cheerful-looking men, and looked 
greatly better than the dirty crowd that thronged to 
gaze at them. The royal banner of England, quarter- 
ing the lion, the leopard, and the harp, waved on the 
town-house, and looked gorgeous and venerable. Here 
and there a woman exchanged greetings with an in- 
dividual soldier, as he marched along, and gentlemen 
shook hands with officers with whom they happened 
to be acquainted. Being a stranger in the land, it 
seemed as if I could see the future in the present bet- 
ter than if I had been an Englishman ; so I questioned 
with myself how many of these ruddy-cheeked young 
fellows, marching so stoutly away, would ever tread 
English ground again. The populace did not evince 
any enthusiasm, yet there could not possibly be a war 
to which the country could assent more fully than to 
this. I somewhat doubt whether the English popu- 
lace really feels a vital interest in the nation. 

Some years ago, a piece of rude marble sculpture, 
representing St. George and the Dragon, was found 
over the fireplace of a cottage near Rock Ferry, on 
the road to Chester. It was plastered over with pipe- 
clay, and its existence was unknown to the cottagers, 
until a lady noticed the projection and asked what it 
was. It was supposed to have originally adorned the 



494 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

walls of the Priory at Birkenhead. It measured four- 
teen and a half by nine inches, in which space were 
the heads of a king and queen, with uplifted hands, 
in prayer ; their daughters also in prayer, and looking 
very grim ; a lamb, the slain dragon, and St. George, 
proudly prancing on what looks like a donkey, bran- 
dishing a sword over his head. 

The following is a legend inscribed on the inner 
margin of a curious old box : — 

" From Birkenhead into Hilbree 
A squirrel might leap from tree to tree." 

I do not know where Hilbree is ; but all round Bir- 
kenhead a squirrel would scarcely find a single tree to 
climb upon. All is pavement and brick buildings now. 

Good Friday. — The English and Irish think it 
good to plant on this day, because it was the day when 
our Saviour's body was laid in the grave. Seeds, 
therefore, are certain to rise again. 

At dinner the other day, Mrs. mentioned the 

origin of Franklin's adoption of the customary civil 
dress, when going to court as a diplomatist. It was 
simply that his tailor had disappointed him of his 
court suit, and he wore his plain one with great reluc- 
tance, because he had no other. Afterwards, gaining 
great success and praise by his mishap, he continued 
to wear it from policy. 

The grandmother of Mrs. died fifty years ago, 

at the age of twenty-eight. She had great personal 
charms, and among them a head of beautiful chestnut 
hair. After her burial in a family tomb, the coffin of 



1854.] LIVERPOOL. 495 

one of her children was laid on her own, so that the 
lid seems to have decayed, or been broken from this 
cause ; at any rate, this was the case when the tomb 
was opened about a year ago. The grandmother's 
coffin was then found to be filled with beautiful, 
glossy, living chestnut ringlets, into which her whole 
substance seems to have been transformed, for there 
wac nothing else but these shining curls, the growth 
of half a century in the tomb. An old man, with a 
ringlet of his youthful mistress treasured on his heart, 
might be supposed to witness this wonderful thing. 

Madam , who is now at my house, and very 

infirm, though not old, was once carried to the grave, 
and on the point of being buried. It was in Barbary, 
where her husband was Consul » General. He was 
greatly attached to her, and told the pall-bearers at 
the grave that he must see her once more. When her 
face was uncovered, he thought he discerned signs of 
life, and felt a warmth. Finally she revived, and for 
many years afterwards supposed the funeral proces- 
sion to have been a dream ; she having been partially 
conscious throughout, and having felt the wind blow- 
ing on her, and lifting the shroud from her feet, — 
for I presume she was to be buried in Oriental style, 
without a coffin. Long after, in London, when she 
was speaking of this dream, her husband told her the 
facts, and she fainted away. Whenever it is now 

mentioned, her face turns white. Mr. , her son, 

was born on shipboard, on the coast of Spain, and 
claims four nationalities, — those of Spain, England, 
Ireland, and the United States ; his father being Irish, 
his mother a native of England, himself a naturalized 
Utizen of the United States, and his father having 



496 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

registered his birth and baptism in a Catholic church 
of Gibraltar, which gives him Spanish privileges. He 
has hereditary claims to a Spanish countship. His 
infancy was spent in Barbary, and his lips first lisped 
in Arabic. There has been an unsettled and wander- 
ing character in his whole life. 

The grandfather of Madam , who was a British 

officer, once horsewhipped Paul Jones, — Jones being 
a poltroon. How singular it is that the personal cour- 
age of famous warriors should be so often called in 
question ! 

May 20th. — I went yesterday to a hospital to take 
the oath of a mate to a protest. He had met with a 
severe accident by a fall on shipboard. The hospital 
is a large edifice of red freestone, with wide airy pas- 
sages, resounding with footsteps passing through them. 
A porter was waiting in the vestibule. Mr. Wilding 
and myself were shown to the parlor, in the first in- 
stance, — a neat, plainly furnished room, with news- 
papers and pamphlets lying on the table and sofas. 
Soon the surgeon of the house came, — a brisk, alac- 
ritous, civil, cheerful young man, by whom we were 
shown to the apartment where the mate was lying. 
As we went through the principal passage, a man was 
borne along in a chair looking very pale, rather wild, 
and altogether as if he had just been through great 
tribulation, and hardly knew as yet whereabouts he 
was. I noticed that his left arm was but a stump, 
and seemed done up in red baize, — at all events it was 
of a scarlet hue. The surgeon shook his right hand 
cheerily, and he was carried on. This was a patienA 
who had just had his arm cut off. He had been a 
rough person apparently, but now there was a kind of 
tenderness about him, through pain and helplessness. 



1854.] LIVERPOOL. 49? 

In the chamber where the mate lay, there were 
seven beds, all of them occupied by persons who had 
met with accidents. In the centre of the room was a 
stationary pine table, about the length of a man, in- 
tended, I suppose, to stretch patients upon for nec- 
essary operations. The furniture of the beds was plain 
and homely. I thought that the faces of the patients 
all looked remarkably intelligent, though they were 
evidently men of the lower classes. Suffering had 
educated them morally and intellectually. They gazed 
curiously at Mr. Wilding and me, but nobody said a 
word. In the bed next to the mate lay a little boy 
with a broken thigh. The surgeon observed that chil- 
dren generally did well with accidents ; and this boy 
certainly looked very bright and cheerful. There was 
nothing particularly interesting about the mate. 

After finishing our business, the surgeon showed us 
into another room of the surgical ward, likewise de- 
voted to cases of accident and injury. All the beds 
were occupied, and in two of them lay two American 
sailors who had recently been stabbed. They had been 
severely hurt, but were doing very well. The surgeon 
thought that it was a good arrangement to have sev- 
eral cases together, and that the patients kept up 
one another's spirits, — being often merry together. 
Smiles and laughter may operate favorably enough 
from bed to bed ; but dying groans, I should think, 
must be somewhat of a discouragement. Neverthe- 
less, the previous habits and modes of life of such 
people as compose the more numerous class of patients 
in a hospital must be considered before deciding this 
matter. It is very possible that their misery likes 
such bedfellows as it here finds. 

As we were taking our leave, the surgeon asked us 

VOL. VII 32 



498 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

if we should not like to see the operating-room ; and 
before we could reply he threw open the door, and 
behold, there was a roll of linen " garments rolled in 
blood," — and a bloody fragment of a human arm ! 
The surgeon glanced at me, and smiled kindly, but as 
if pitying my discomposure. 

Gervase Elwes, son of Sir Gervase Elwes, Baronet, 
of Stoke, Suffolk, married Isabella, daughter of Sir 
Thomas Hervey, Knight, and sister of the first Earl 
of Bristol. This Gervase died before his father, but 
left a son, Henry, who succeeded to the Baronetcy. 
Sir Henry died without issue, and was succeeded by 
his sister's son, John Maggott Twining, who assumed 
the name of Elwes. He was the famous miser, and 
must have had Hawthorne blood in him, through his 
grandfather, Gervase, whose mother was a Hawthorne. 
It was to this Gervase that my ancestor, William Haw- 
thorne, devised some land in Massachusetts, " if he 
would come over, and enjoy it." My ancestor calls 
him his nephew. 

June 12th. — Barry Cornwall, Mr. Procter, called 
on me a week or more ago, but I happened not to be 
in the office. Saturday last he called again, and as I 
had crossed to Rock Park he followed me thither. A 
plain, middle - sized, English - looking gentleman, el- 
derly, with short white hair, and particularly quiet in 
his manners. He talks in a somewhat low tone with- 
out emphasis, scarcely distinct. . . . His head has a 
good outline, and would look well in marble. I liked 
him very well. He talked unaffectedly, showing an 
author's regard to his reputation, and was evidently 
pleased to hear of his American celebrity. He said 



1854.] LIVERPOOL. 499 

that in his younger days he was a scientific pugilist, 
and once took a journey to have a sparring encounter 
with the Game-Chicken. Certainly, no one would have 
looked for a pugilist in this subdued old gentleman. 
He is now Commissioner of Lunacy, and makes pe- 
riodical circuits through the country, attending to the 
business of his office. He is slightly deaf, and this 
may be the cause of his unaccented utterance, — ow- 
ing to his not being able to regulate his voice exactly 
by his own ear. . . . He is a good man, and much 
better expressed by his real name, Procter, than by 
his poetical one, Barry Cornwall. . . . He took my 
hand in both of his at parting. . . . 

June 11th. — At eleven, at this season (and how 
much longer I know not), there is still a twilight. If 
we could only have such dry, deliciously warm even- 
ings as we used to have in our own land, what enjoy- 
ment there might be in these interminable twilights ! 
But here we close the window-shutters, and make our- 
selves cosey by a coal-fire. 

All three of the children, and, I think, my wife and 
myself, are going through the hooping-cough. The 
east-wind of this season and region is most horrible. 
There have been no really warm days ; for though the 
sunshine is sometimes hot, there is never any diffused 
heat throughout the air. On passing from the sun- 
shine into the shade, we immediately feel too cool. 

June 20fA. — The vagabond musicians about town 
are very numerous. On board the steam ferry-boats, 
I have heretofore spoken of them. They infest them 
from May to November, for very little gain appar- 
ently. A shilling a day per man must be the utmost 



500 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

of their emolument. It is rather sad to see somewhat 
respectable old men engaged in this way, with two 
or three younger associates. Their instruments look 
much the worse for wear, and even my unmusical ear 
can distinguish more discord than harmony. They 
appear to be a very quiet and harmless people. Some- 
times there is a woman playing on a fiddle, while her 
husband blows a wind instrument. In the streets it 
is not unusual to find a band of half a dozen perform- 
ers, who, without any provocation or reason whatever, 
sound their brazen instruments till the houses reecho. 
Sometimes one passes a man who stands whistling 
a tune most unweariably, though I never saw any- 
body give him anything. The ballad-singers are the 
strangest, from the total lack of any music in their 
cracked voices. Sometimes you see a space cleared in 
the street, and a foreigner playing, while a girl — 
weather-beaten, tanned, and wholly uncomely in face 
and shabby in attire — - dances ballets. The common 
people look on, and never criticise or treat any of 
these poor devils unkindly or uncivilly ; but I do not 
observe that they give them anything. 

A crowd — or, at all events, a moderate-sized group 
— is much more easily drawn together here than with 
us. The people have a good deal of idle and momen- 
tary curiosity, and are always ready to stop when an- 
other person has stopped, so as to see what has at- 
tracted his attention. I hardly ever pause to look at a 
shop - window without being immediately incommoded 
by boys and men, who stop likewise, and would forth- 
with throng the pavement if I did not move on. 

June 30th. — If it is not known how and when a 
man dies, it makes a ghost of him for many years 



1854.] LIVERPOOL. 501 

thereafter, perhaps for centuries. King Arthur is an 
example ; also the Emperor Frederick, and other fa- 
mous men, who were thought to be alive ages after 
their disappearance. So with private individuals. I 
had an uncle John, who went a voyage to sea about 
the beginning of the War of 1812, and has never 
returned to this hour. But as long as his mother 
lived, as many as twenty years, she never gave up the 
hope of his return, and was constantly hearing stories 
of persons whose description answered to his. Some 
people actually affirmed that they had seen him in 
various parts of the world. Thus, so far as her belief 
was concerned, he still walked the earth. And even 
to this day I never see his name, which is no very un- 
common one, without thinking that this may be the 
lost uncle. 

Thus, too, the French Dauphin still exists, or a kind 
of ghost of him ; the three Tells, too, in the cavern of 
Uri. 

July 6th. — Mr. Cecil, the other day, was saying 
that England could produce as fine peaches as any 
other country. I asked what was the particular ex- 
cellence of a peach, and he answered, " Its cooling 
and refreshing quality, like that of a melon ! " Just 
think of this idea of the richest, most luscious, of all 
fruits ! But the untra veiled Englishman has no more 
idea of what fruit is than of what sunshine is; he 
thinks he has tasted the first and felt the last, but 
they are both alike watery. I heard a lady in Lord 
Street talking about the " broiling sun," when I was 
almost in a shiver. They keep up their animal heat 
by means of wine and ale, else they could not bear 
this climate. 



502 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

July 19th. — A week ago I made a little tour in 
North Wales with Mr. Bright. We left Birkenhead 
by railway for Chester at two o'clock; thence for 
Bangor ; thence by carriage over the Menai Bridge to 
Beaumaris. At Beaumaris, a fine old castle, — quite 
coming up to my idea of what an old castle should be. 
A gray, ivy-hung exterior wall, with large round 
towers at intervals; within this another wall, the 
place of the portcullis between ; and again, within the 
second wall the castle itself, with a spacious green 
court-yard in front. The outer wall is so thick that a 
passage runs in it all round the castle, which covers a 
space of three acres. This passage gives access to a 
chapel, still very perfect, and to various apartments in 
the towers, — all exceedingly dismal, and giving very 
unpleasant impressions of the way in which the garri- 
son of the castle lived. The main castle is entirely 
roofless, but the hall and other rooms are pointed out 
by the guide, and the whole is tapestried with abun- 
dant ivy, so that my impression is of gray walls, with 
here and there a vast green curtain ; a carpet of green 
over the floors of halls and apartments ; and festoons 
around all the outer battlement, with an uneven and 
rather perilous foot-path running along the top. There 
is a fine vista through the castle itself, and the two 
gateways of the two encompassing walls. The pas- 
sage within the wall is very rude, both underfoot 
and on each side, with various ascents and descents of 
rough steps, — sometimes so low that your head is in 
danger; and dark, except where a little light comes 
through a loophole or window in the thickness of the 
wall. In front of the castle a tennis-court was fitted 
up, by laying a smooth pavement on the ground, and 
casing the walls with tin or zinc, if I recollect aright 



1854. j NORTH WALES. 503 

All this was open to the sky ; and when we were 
there, some young men of the town were playing at 
the game. There are but very few of these tennis- 
courts in England; and this old castle was a very 
strange place for one. 

The castle is the property of Sir Richard Bulkely, 
whose seat is in the vicinity, and who owns a great 
part of the island of Anglesea, on which Beaumaris 
lies. The hotel where we stopped was the Bulkely 
Arms, and Sir Richard has a kind of feudal influence 
in the town. 

In the morning we walked along a delightful road, 
bordering on the Menai Straits, to Bangor Ferry. It 
was really a very pleasant road, overhung by a growth 
of young wood, exceedingly green and fresh. English 
trees are green all about their stems, owing to the 
creeping plants that overrun them. There were some 
flowers in the hedges, such as we cultivate in gardens. 
At the ferry, there was a whitewashed cottage; a 
woman or two, some children, and a fisherman-like 
personage, walking to and fro before the door. The 
scenery of the strait is very beautiful and picturesque, 
and directly opposite to us lay Bangor, — the strait 
being here almost a mile across. An American ship 
from Boston lay in the middle of it. The ferry-boat 
was just putting off from the Bangor side, and, by the 
aid of a sail, soon neared the shore. 

At Bangor we went to a handsome hotel, and hired 
a carriage and two horses for some Welsh place, the 
name of which I forget; neither can I remember a 
single name of the places through which we posted 
that day, nor could I spell them if I heard them pro- 
nounced, nor pronounce them if I saw them spelt. It 
was a circuit of about forty miles, bringing us to Con- 



504 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854, 

way at last. I remember a great slate-quarry; and 
also that many of the cottages, in the first part of 
our drive, were built of blocks of slate. The moun- 
tains were very bold, thrusting themselves up abruptly 
in peaks, — not of the dumpling formation, which is 
somewhat too prevalent among the New England 
mountains. At one point we saw Snowdon, with its 
bifold summit. We also visited the smaller waterfall 
(this is a translation of an unpronounceable Welsh 
name), which is the largest in Wales. It was a very 
beautiful rapid, and the guide-book considers it equal 
in sublimity to Niagara. Likewise there were one or 
two lakes which the guide-book greatly admired, but 
which to me, who remembered a hundred sheets of 
blue water in New England, seemed nothing more 
than sullen and dreary puddles, with bare banks, and 
wholly destitute of beauty. I think they were no- 
where more than a hundred yards across. But the 
hills were certainly very good, and, though generally 
bare of trees, their outlines thereby were rendered the 
stronger and more striking. 

Many of the Welsh women, particularly the elder 
T)nes, wear black beaver hats, high-crowned, and al- 
most precisely like men's. It makes them look ugly 
and witch-like. Welsh is still the prevalent language, 
and the only one spoken by a great many of the in- 
habitants. I have had Welsh people in my office, on 
official business, with whom I could not communicate 
except through an interpreter. 

At some unutterable village we went into a little 
church, where we saw an old stone image of a warrior, 
lying on his back, with his hands clasped. It was the 
natural son (if I remember rightly) of David, Prince 
of Wales, and was doubtless the better part of a thou- 



1854.3 LIVERPOOL. 505 

sand years old. There was likewise a stone coffin of 
still greater age ; some person of rank and renown 
had mouldered to dust within it, but it was now open 
and empty. Also, there were monumental brasses on 
the walls, engraved with portraits of a gentleman and 
lady in the costumes of Elizabeth's time. Also, on 
one of the pews, a brass record of some persons who 
slept in the vault beneath ; so that, every Sunday, the 
survivors and descendants kneel and worship directly 
over their dead ancestors. In the churchyard, on a 
flat tombstone, there was the representation of a harp. 
I supposed that it must be the resting-place of a bard ; 
but the inscription was in memory of a merchant, and 
a skilful manufacturer of harps. 

This was a very delightful town. We saw a great 
many things which it is now too late to describe, the 
sharpness of the first impression being gone ; but I 
think I can produce something of the sentiment of it 
hereafter. 

We arrived at Conway late in the afternoon, to take 
the rail for Chester. I must see Conway, with its old 
gray wall and its unrivalled castle, again. It was bet- 
ter than Beaumaris, and I never saw anything more 
picturesque than the prospect from the castle-wall to- 
wards the sea. We reached Chester at 10 p. M. The 
next morning, Mr. Bright left for Liverpool before I 
was awake. I visited the Cathedral, where the organ 
was sounding, sauntered through the Rows, bought 
some playthings for the children, and left for home 
soon after twelve. 

. Liverpool, August 8th. — Visiting the Zoological 

Gardens the other day with J , it occurred to me 

ivhat a fantastic kind of life a person connected with 



506 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

them might be depicted as leading, — a child, for in- 
stance. The grounds are very extensive, and include 
arrangements for all kinds of exhibitions calculated to 
attract the idle people of a great city. In one enclos- 
ure is a bear, who climbs a pole to get cake and gin- 
gerbread from the spectators. Elsewhere, a circular 
building, with compartments for lions, wolves, and 
tigers. In another part of the garden is a colony of 
monkeys, the skeleton of an elephant, birds of all 
kinds. Swans and various rare water-fowl were swim- 
ming on a piece of water, which was green, by the by, 
and when the fowls dived they stirred up black mud. 
A stork was parading along the margin, with melan- 
choly strides of its long legs, and came slowly towards 
us, as if for companionship. In one apartment was an 
obstreperously noisy society of parrots and macaws, 
most gorgeous and diversified of hue. These different 
colonies of birds and beasts were scattered about in 
various parts of the grounds, so that you came upon 
them unexpectedly. Also, there were archery and 
shooting-grounds, and a swing. A theatre, also, at 
which a rehearsal was going on, — we standing at one 
of the doors, and looking in towards the dusky stage 
where the company in their ordinary dresses were re- 
hearsing something that had a good deal of dance and 
action in it. In the open air there was an arrange- 
ment of painted scenery representing a wide expanse 
of mountains, with a city at their feet, and before it 
the sea, with actual water, and large vessels upon it, 
the vessels having only the side that would be pre- 
sented to the spectator. But the scenery was so good 
that at a first casual glance I almost mistook it for 
reality. There was a refreshment-room, with drinks 
and cakes and pastry, but, so far as I saw, no substan- 



1854.] LIVERPOOL. 507 

tial victual. About in the centre of the garden there 
was an actual, homely-looking, small dwelling-house, 
where perhaps the overlookers of the place live. Now 
this might be wrought, in an imaginative description, 
into a pleasant sort of a fool's paradise, where all sorts 
of unreal delights should cluster round some suitable 
personage ; and it would relieve, in a very odd and ef- 
fective way, the stern realities of life on the outside of 
the garden-walls. I saw a little girl, simply dressed, 
who seemed to have her habitat within the grounds. 
There was also a daguerreotypist, with his wife and 
family, carrying on his business in a shanty, and per- 
haps having his home in its inner room. He seemed 
to be an honest, intelligent, pleasant young man, and 
his wife a pleasant woman ; and I had J 's da- 
guerreotype taken for three shillings, in a little gilded 
frame. In the description of the garden, the velvet 
turf, of a charming verdure, and the shrubbery and 
shadowy walks and large trees, and the slopes and in- 
equalities of ground, must not be forgotten. In one 
place there was a maze and labyrinth, where a person 
might wander a long while in the vain endeavor to get 
out, although all the time looking at the exterior gar- 
den, over the low hedges that border the walks of the 
maze. And this is like the inappreciable difficulties 
that often beset us in life. 

I will see it again before long, and get some addi- 
tional record of it. 

August 10th. — We went to the Isle of Man, a few 
weeks ago, where S and the children spent a fort- 
night. I spent two Sundays with them. 

I never saw anything prettier than the little church 
of Kirk Madden there. It stands in a perfect seclu- 



508 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

sion of shadowy trees, — a plain little church, that 
would not be at all remarkable in another situation, 
but is most picturesque in its solitude and bowery en- 
vironment. The churchyard is quite full and overflow- 
ing with graves, and extends down the gentle slope of 
a hill, with a dark mass of shadow above it. Some of 
the tombstones are flat on the ground, some erect, or 
laid horizontally on low pillars or masonry. There 
were no very old dates on any of these stones ; for the 
climate soon effaces inscriptions, and makes a stone of 
fifty years look as old as one of five hundred, — unless 
it be slate, or something harder than the usual red 
freestone. There was an old Runic monument, how- 
ever, near the centre of the churchyard, that had some 
strange sculpture on it, and an inscription still legible 
by persons learned in such matters. Against the tower 
of the church, too, there is a circular stone, with carv- 
ing on it, said to be of immemorial antiquity. There 
is likewise a tall marble monument, as much as fifty 
feet high, erected some years ago to the memory of one 
of the Athol family by his brother-officers of a local 
regiment of which he was colonel. At one of the side- 
entrances of the church, and forming the threshold 
within the thickness of the wall, so that the feet of all 
who enter must tread on it, is a flat tombstone of some- 
body who felt himself a sinner, no doubt, and desired 
to be thus trampled upon. The stone is much worn. 

The structure is extremely plain inside and very 
small. On the walls, over the pews, are several monu- 
mental sculptures, — a quite elaborate one to a Colonel 
Murray, of the Coldstream Guards ; his military pro- 
fession being designated by banners and swords in 
marble. Another was to a farmer. 

On one side of the church-tower there was a little 



1854.] LIVERPOOL. 509 

penthouse, or lean-to, — merely a stone roof, about 
three or four feet high, and supported by a single 
pillar, — beneath which was once deposited the bier. 

I have let too much time pass before attempting to 
record my impressions of the Isle of Man ; but, as re- 
gards this church, no description can come up to its 
quiet beauty, its seclusion, and its every requisite for 
an English country church. 

Last Sunday I went to Eastham, and, entering the 
churchyard, sat down on a tombstone under the yew- 
tree which has been known for centuries as the Great 
Tree of Eastham. Some of the village people were 
sitting on the graves near the door ; and an old wo- 
man came towards me, and said, in a low, kindly, ad- 
monishing tone, that I must not let the sexton see me, 
because he would not allow any one to be there in 
sacrament-time. I inquired why she and her compan- 
ions were there, and she said they were waiting for 
the sacrament. So I thanked her, gave her a six- 
pence, and departed. Close under the eaves, I saw 
two upright stones, in memory of two old servants of 
the Stanley family, — one over ninety, and the other 
over eighty years of age. 

August 12th. — J and I went to Birkenhead 

Park yesterday. There is a large ornamental gate- 
way to the Park, and the grounds within are neatly 
laid out, with borders of shrubbery. There is a sheet 
of water, with swans and other aquatic fowl, which 
swim about, and are fed with dainties by the visitors. 
Nothing can be more beautiful than a swan. It is the 
ideal of a goose, — a goose beautified and beatified. 
There were not a great many visitors, but some chil- 



510 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

dren were dancing on the green, and a few lover-like 
people straying about. I think the English behave 
better than the Americans at similar places. 

There was a earner a-obscur a, very wretchedly indis- 
tinct. At the refreshment-room were ginger-beer and 
British wines. 

August 2\st. — I was in the Crown Court on Satur- 
day, sitting in the sheriff's seat. The judge was Baron 

, an old gentleman of sixty, with very large, long 

features. His wig helped him to look like some 
strange kind of animal, — very queer, but yet with a 
sagacious, and, on the whole, beneficent aspect. Dur- 
ing the session some mischievous young barrister oc- 
cupied himself with sketching the judge in pencil ; and, 
being handed about, it found its way to me. It was 
very like and very laughable, but hardly caricatured. 
The judicial wig is an exceedingly odd affair ; and as 
it covers both ears, it would seem intended to prevent 
his Lordship, and justice in his person, from hearing 
any of the case on either side, that thereby he may 
decide the better. It is like the old idea of blindfold- 
ing the statue of Justice. 

It seems to me there is less formality, less distance 
between the judge, jury, witnesses, and bar, in the 
English courts than in our own. The judge takes a 
very active part in the trial, constantly asking a ques- 
tion of the witness on the stand, making remarks on 
the conduct of the trial, putting in his word on all 
occasions, and allowing his own sense of the matter 
in hand to be pretty plainly seen ; so that, before the 
trial is over, and long before his own charge is deliv- 
ered, he must have exercised a very powerful influence 
over the minds of the jury. All this is done, not with- 



1854] EATON HALL. 511 

out dignity, yet in a familiar kind of way. It is a 
sort of paternal supervision of the whole matter, quite 
unlike the cold awfulness of an American judge. But 
all this may be owing partly to the personal charac- 
teristics of Baron . It appeared to me, however, 

that, from the closer relations of all parties, truth was 
likely to be arrived at and justice to be done. As an 
innocent man, I should not be afraid to be tried by 
Baron . 

EATON HALL. 

August 24:th. — I went to Eaton Hall yesterday with 
my wife and Mr. Gr. P. Bradford, via Chester. On 
our way, at the latter place, we visited St. John's 
Church. It is built of the same red freestone as the 
cathedral, and looked exceedingly antique, and vener- 
able ; this kind of stone, from its softness, and its lia- 
bility to be acted upon by the weather, being liable to 
an early decay. Nevertheless, I believe the church 
was built above a thousand years ago, — some parts 
of it, at least, — and the surface of the tower and 
walls is worn away and hollowed in shallow sweeps by 
the hand of Time. There were broken niches in sev- 
eral places, where statues had formerly stood. All, 
except two or three, had fallen or crumbled away, and 
those which remained were much damaged. The face 
and details of the figure were almost obliterated. 
There were many gravestones round the church, but 
none of them of any antiquity. Probably, as the 
names become indistinguishable on the older stones, 
the graves are dug over again, and filled with new 
occupants and covered with new stones, or perhaps 
with the old ones newly inscribed. 

Closely connected with the church was the clergy- 



512 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1851. 

man's house, a comfortable-looking residence ; and 
likewise in the churchyard, with tombstones all about 
it, even almost at the threshold, so that the doorstep 
itself might have been a tombstone, was another house, 
of respectable size and aspect. We surmised that this 
might be the sexton's dwelling, but it proved not to 
be so ; and a woman, answering our knock, directed 
us to the place where he might be found. So Mr. 

Bradford and I went in search of him, leaving S 

seated on a tombstone. The sexton was a jolly-look- 
ing, ruddy-faced man, a mechanic of some sort, appar- 
ently, and he followed us to the churchyard with much 

alacrity. We found S standing at a gateway, 

which opened into the most ancient, and now quite 
ruinous, part of the church, the present edifice cover- 
ing much less ground than it did some centuries ago. 
We went through this gateway, and found ourselves 
in an enclosure of venerable walls, open to the sky, 
with old Norman arches standing about, beneath the 
loftiest of which the sexton told us the high altar used 
to stand. Of course, there were weeds and ivy grow- 
ing in the crevices, but not so abundantly as I have 
seen them elsewhere. The sexton pointed out a piece 
of a statue that had once stood in one of the niches, 
and which he himself, I think, had dug up from sev- 
eral feet below the earth ; also, in a niche of the walls, 
high above our heads, he showed us an ancient wooden 
coffin, hewn out of a solid log of oak, the hollow be- 
ing made rudely in the shape of a human figure. This 
too had been dug up, and nobody knew how old it 
was. While we looked at all this solemn old trum- 
pery, the curate, quite a young man, stood at the back 
door of his house, elevated considerably above the 
ruins, with his young wife (I presume) and a friend 



1854.] EATON HALL. 513 

or two, chatting cheerfully among themselves. It was 
pleasant to see them there. After examining the ruins, 
we went inside of the church, and found it a dim and 
dusky old place, quite paved over with tombstones, 
not an inch of space being left in the aisles or near 
the altar, or in any nook or corner, uncovered by a 
tombstone. There were also mural monuments and 
escutcheons, and close against the wall lay the muti- 
lated statue of a Crusader, with his legs crossed, in 
the style which one has so often read about. The 
old fellow seemed to have been represented in chain 
armor ; but he had been more battered and bruised 
since death than even during his pugnacious life, and 
his nose was almost knocked away. This figure had 
been dug up many years ago, and nobody knows whom 
it was meant to commemorate. 

The nave of the church is supported by two rows of 
Saxon pillars, not very lofty, but six feet six inches 
(so the sexton says) in diameter. They are covered 
with plaster, which was laid on ages ago, and is now 
so hard and smooth that I took the pillars to be really 
composed of solid shafts of gray stone. But, at one 
end of the church, the plaster had been removed from 
two of the pillars, in order to discover whether they 
were still sound enough to support the building ; and 
they prove to be made of blocks of red freestone, just 
as sound as when it came from the quarry ; for though 
this stone soon crumbles in the open air, it is as good 
as indestructible when sheltered from the weather. It 
looked very strange to see the fresh hue of these two 
pillars amidst the dingy antiquity of the rest of the 
structure. 

The body of the church is covered with pews, the 
wooden enclosures of which seemed of antique fashion. 

vol. vii. 33 



514 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

There were also modern stoves ; but the sexton said 
it was very cold there in spite of the stoves. It had, I 
must say, a disagreeable odor pervading it, in which 
the dead people of long ago had doubtless some share, 
— a musty odor, by no means amounting to a stench, 
but unpleasant, and, I should think, unwholesome. 
Old wood-work, and old stones, and antiquity of all 
kinds, moral and physical, go to make up this smell. 
I observed it in the cathedral, and Chester generally 
has it, especially under the Rows, After all, the nec- 
essary damp and lack of sunshine, in such a shadowy 
old church as this, have probably more to do with it 
than the dead people have ; although I did think the 
odor was particularly strong over some of the tomb- 
stones. Not having shillings to give the sexton, we 
were forced to give him half a crown. 

The Church of St. John is outside of the city walls. 
Entering the East gate, we walked awhile under the 
Rows, bought our tickets for Eaton Hall and its gar- 
dens, and likewise some playthings for the children ; 
for this old city of Chester seems to me to possess an 
unusual number of toy-shops. Finally we took a cab, 
and drove to the Hall, about four miles distant, nearly 
the whole of the way lying through the wooded Park. 
There are many sorts of trees, making up a wilderness, 
which looked not unlike the woods of our own Con- 
cord, only less wild. The English oak is not a hand- 
some tree, being short and sturdy, with a round, thick 
mass of foliage, lying all within its own bounds. It 
was a showery day. Had there been any sunshine, 
there might doubtless have been many beautiful effects 
of light and shadow in these woods. We saw one or 
two herds of deer, quietly feeding, a hundred yards or 
so distant. They appeared to be somewhat wilder 



1854.] EATON HALL. 515 

than cattle, but, I think, not much wilder than sheep. 
Their ancestors have probably been in a half -domes- 
ticated state, receiving food at the hands of man, in 
winter, for centuries. There is a kind of poetry in 
this, quite as much as if they were really wild deer, 
such as their forefathers were, when Hugh Lupus used 
to hunt them. 

Our miserable cab drew up at the steps of Eaton 
Hall, and, ascending under the portico, the door swung 
silently open, and we were received very civilly by two 
old men, — one, a tall footman in livery ; the other, of 
higher grade, in plain clothes. The entrance-hall is 
very spacious, and the floor is tessellated or somehow 
inlaid with marble. There was statuary in marble on 
the floor, and in niches stood several figures in antique 
armor, of various dates ; some with lances, and others 
with battle-axes and swords. There was a two-handed 
sword, as much as six feet long ; but not nearly so pon- 
derous as I have supposed this kind of weapon to be, 
from reading of it. I could easily have brandished it. 

I don't think I am a good sight-seer ; at least, I 
soon get satisfied with looking at set sights, and wish 
to go on to the next. 

The plainly dressed old man now led us into a long- 
corridor, which goes, I think, the whole length of the 
house, about five hundred feet, arched all the way, 
and lengthened interminably by a looking-glass at the 
end, in which I saw our own party approaching like a 
party of strangers. But I have so often seen this effect 
produced in dry-goods stores and elsewhere that I was 
not much impressed. There were family portraits and 
other pictures, and likewise pieces of statuary, along 
this arched corridor ; and it communicated with a 
chapel with a scriptural altar-piece, copied from Ku- 



516 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

bens, and a picture of St. Michael and the Dragon, and 
two, or perhaps three, richly painted windows. Every- 
thing here is entirely new and fresh, this part having 
been repaired, and never yet inhabited by the family. 
This brand-newness makes it much less effective than 
if it had been lived in ; and I felt pretty much as if I 
were strolling through any other renewed house. Af- 
ter all, the utmost force of man can do positively very 
little towards making grand things or beautiful things. 
The imagination can do so much more, merely on shut- 
ting one's eyes, that the actual effect seems meagre ; 
so that a new house, unassociated with the past, is ex- 
ceedingly unsatisfactory, especially when you have 
heard that the wealth and skill of man has here done 
its best. Besides, the rooms, as we saw them, did not 
look by any means their best, the carpets not being 
down, and the furniture being covered with protective 
envelopes. However, rooms cannot be seen to advan- 
tage by daylight ; it being altogether essential to the 
effect, that they should be illuminated by artificial 
light, which takes them somewhat out of the region of 
bare reality. Nevertheless, there was undoubtedly 
great splendor, — for the details of which I refer to 
the guide-book. Among the family portraits, there 
was one of a lady famous for her beautiful hand ; and 
she was holding it up to notice in the funniest way, 
- — and very beautiful it certainly was. The private 
apartments of the family were not shown us. I should 
think it impossible for the owner of this house to im- 
bue it with his personality to such a degree as to feel 
it to be his home. It must be like a small lobster in 
a shell much too large for him. 

After seeing what was to be seen of the rooms, we 
visited the gardens, in which are noble conservatories 



1854.] EATON HALL. 517 

and hot-houses, containing all manner of rare and 
beautiful flowers, and tropical fruits. I noticed some 
large pines, looking as if they were really made of 
gold. The gardener (under-gardener I suppose he 
was) who showed this part of the spectacle was very 
intelligent as well as kindly, and seemed to take an in- 
terest in his business. He gave S a purple ever- 
lasting flower, which will endure a great many years, 
as a memento of our visit to Eaton Hall. Finally, we 
took a view of the front of the edifice, which is very 
fine, and much more satisfactory than the interior, — 
and returned to Chester. 

We strolled about under the unsavory Rows, some- 
times scudding from side to side of the street, through 
the shower ; took lunch in a confectioner's shop, and 
drove to the railway station in time for the three-o'clock 
train. It looked picturesque to see two little girls, 
hand in hand, racing along the ancient passages of 
the Rows ; but Chester has a very evil smell. 

At the railroad station, S saw a small edition 

of " Twice-Told Tales," forming a volume of the Cot- 
tage Library ; and, opening it, there was the queerest 
imaginable portrait of myself, — so very queer that we 
could not but buy it. The shilling edition of " The 
Scarlet Letter " and " Seven Gables " are at all the 
book-stalls and shop-windows ; but so is " The Lamp- 
lighter," and still more trashy books. 



August 26th. — All past affairs, all home conclu- 
sions, all people whom I have known in America and 
meet again here, are strangely compelled to undergo a 
new trial. It is not that they suffer by comparison 
with circumstances of English life and forms of Eng- 



518 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

lish manhood or womanhood; but, being free from my 
old surroundings, and the inevitable prejudices of 
home, I decide upon them absolutely. 

I think I neglected to record that I saw Miss Mar- 
tineau a few weeks since. She is a large, robust, el- 
derly woman, and plainly dressed ; but withal she has 
so kind, cheerful, and intelligent a face that she is 
pleasanter to look at than most beauties. Her hair is 
of a decided gray, and she does not shrink from call- 
ing herself old. She is the most continual talker I 
ever heard ; it is really like the babbling of a brook, 
and very lively and sensible too ; and all the while she 
talks, she moves the bowl of her ear-trumpet from one 
auditor to another, so that it becomes quite an organ 
of intelligence and sympathy between her and your- 
self. The ear-trumpet seems a sensible part of her, 
like the antennae of some insects. If you have any lit- 
tle remark to make, you drop it in ; and she helps you 
to make remarks by this delicate little appeal of the 
trumpet, as she slightly directs it towards you ; and if 
you have nothing to say, the appeal is not strong 
enough to embarrass you. All her talk was about 
herself and her affairs ; but it did not seem like ego- 
tism, because it was so cheerful and free from morbid- 
ness. And this woman is an Atheist, and thinks that 
the principle of life will become extinct when her body 
is laid in the grave ! I will not think so, were it only 
for her sake. What ! only a few weeds to spring out 
of her mortality, instead of her intellect and sympa- 
thies flowering and fruiting forever ! 



September ISth. — My family went to Rhyl last 
Thursday, and on Saturday I joined them there, in 



1854.] RHYL. 519 

company with O' Sullivan, who arrived in the Behama 
from Lisbon that morning. We went by way of 

Chester, and found S waiting for us at the Rhyl 

station. Rhyl is a most uninteresting place, — a col- 
lection of new lodging-houses and hotels, on a long 
sand-beach, which the tide leaves bare almost to the 
horizon. The sand is by no means a marble pavement, 
but sinks under the foot, and makes very heavy walk- 
ing ; but there is a promenade in front of the principal 
range of houses, looking on the sea, whereon we have 
rather better footing. Almost all the houses were full, 

and S had taken a parlor and two bedrooms, and 

is living after the English fashion, providing her own 
table, lights, fuel, and everything. It is very awkward 
to our American notions ; but there is an independence 
about it, which I think must make it' agreeable on bet- 
ter acquaintance. But the place is certainly destitute 
of attraction, and life seems to pass very heavily. 
The English do not appear to have a turn for amus- 
ing themselves. 

Sunday was a bright and hot day, and in the fore- 
noon I set out on a walk, not well knowing whither, 
over a very dusty road, with not a particle of shade 
along its dead level. The Welsh mountains were be- 
fore me, at the distance of three or four miles, — long 
ridgy hills, descending pretty abruptly upon the plain ; 
on either side of the road, here and there, an old white- 
washed, thatched stone cottage, or a stone farm-house, 
with an aspect of some antiquity. I never suffered so 
much before, on this side of the water, from heat and 
dust, and should probably have turned back had I not 
espied the round towers and walls of an old castle at 
some distance before me. Having looked at a guide- 
book, previously to setting out, I knew that this must 



520 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

be Rhyddlan Castle, about three miles from Rhyl ; so 
I plodded on, and by and by entered an antiquated 
village, on one side of which the castle stood. This 
Welsh village is very much like the English villages, 
with narrow streets and mean houses or cottages, built 
in blocks, and here and there a larger house standing 
alone ; everything far more compact than in our rural 
villages, and with no grassy street- margin nor trees ; 
aged and dirty also, with dirty children staring at the 
passenger, and an undue supply of mean inns ; most, 
or many of the men in breeches, and some of the 
women, especially the elder ones, in black beaver hats. 
The streets were paved with round pebbles, and looked 
squalid and ugly. 

The children and grown people stared lazily at me 
as I passed, but showed no such alert and vivacious 
curiosity as a community of Yankees would have done. 
I turned up a street that led me to the castle, which 
looked very picturesque close at hand, ■ — more so than 
at a distance, because the towers and walls have not a 
sufficiently broken outline against the sky. There are 
several round towers at the angles of the wall very 
large in their circles, built of gray stone, crumbling, 
ivy-grown, everything that one thinks of in an old ruin. 
I could not get into the inner space of the castle with- 
out climbing over a fence, or clambering down into 
the moat ; so I contented myself with walking round 
it, and viewing it from the outside. Through the gate- 
way I saw a cow feeding on the green grass in the 
inner court of the castle. In one of the walls there 
was a large triangular gap, where perhaps the assail- 
ants had made a breach. Of course there were weeds 
on the ruinous top of the towers, and along the sum. 
mit of the wall. This was the first castle built by Ed 



1854.] RHYL. 521 

ward I. in Wales, and he resided here during the erec- 
tion of Conway Castle, and here Queen Eleanor gave 
birth to a princess. Some few years since a meeting 
of Welsh bards was held within it. 

After viewing it awhile, and listening to the babble 
of some children who lay on the grass near by, I re- 
sumed my walk, and, meeting a Welshman in the vil- 
lage street, I asked him my nearest way back to Rhyl. 
" Dim Sassenach," said he, after a pause. How odd 
that an hour or two on the railway should have 
brought me amongst a people who speak no English ! 
Just below the castle, there is an arched stone bridge 
over the river Clwyd, and the best view of the edifice 
is from hence. It stands on a gentle eminence, com- 
manding the passage of the river, and two twin round 
towers rise close beside one another, whence, I sup- 
pose, archers have often drawn their bows against the 
wild Welshmen, on the river-banks. Behind was the 
line of mountains ; and this was the point of defence 
between the hill country and the lowlands. On the 
bridge stood a good many idle Welshmen, leaning 
over the parapet, and looking at some small vessels 
that had come up the river from the sea. There was 
the frame of a new vessel on the stocks near by. 

As I returned, on my way home, I again inquired 
my way of a man in breeches, who, I found, could 
speak English very well. He was kind, and took pains 
to direct me, giving me the choice of three ways, viz. 
the one by which I came, another across the fields, 
and a third by the embankment along the river-side. 
I chose the latter, and so followed the course of the 
Clwyd, which is very ugly, with a tidal flow and wide 
marshy banks. On its farther side was Rhyddlan 
marsh, where a battle was fought between the Welsh 



522 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

and Saxons a thousand years ago. I have forgotten 
to mention that the castle and its vicinity was the 
scene of the famous battle of the fiddlers, between De 
Blandeville, Earl of Chester, and the Welsh, about the 
time of the Conqueror. 

CONWAY CASTLE. 

September 13th. — On Monday we went with 
O' Sullivan to Conway by rail. Certainly this must 
be the most perfect specimen of a ruinous old castle 
in the whole world ; it quite fills up one's idea. We 
first walked round the exterior of the wall, at the base 
of which are hovels, with dirty children playing about 
them, and pigs rambling along, and squalid women 
visible in the doorways ; but all these things melt into 
the picturesqueness of the scene, and do not harm it. 
The whole town of Conway is built in what was once 
the castle-yard, and the whole circuit of the wall is 
still standing in a delightful state of decay. At the 
angles, and at regular intervals, there are round tow- 
ers, having half their circle on the outside of the walls 
and half within. Most of these towers have a great 
crack pervading them irregularly from top to bottom ; 
the ivy hangs upon them, — the weeds grow on the 
tops. Gateways, three or four of them, open through 
the walls, and streets proceed from them into the 
town. At some points, very old cottages or small 
houses are close against the sides, and, old as they are, 
they must have been built after the whole structure 
was a ruin. In one place I saw the sign of an ale- 
house painted on the gray stones of one of the old 
round towers. As we entered one of the gates, after 
making the entire circuit, we saw an omnibus coming 
down the street towards us, with its horn sounding. 



1854.] CONWAY CASTLE. 523 

Llandudno was its place of destination ; and, knowing 
no more about it than that it was four miles off, we 
took our seats. Llandudno is a watering-village at the 
base of the Great Orme's Head, at the mouth of the 
Conway River. In this omnibus there were two pleas 
ant - looking girls, who talked Welsh together, — r c 
guttural, childish kind of a babble. Afterwards we 
got into conversation with them, and found them very 
agreeable. One of them was reading Tupper's " Pro- 
verbial Philosophy." On reaching Llandudno, S 

waited atr the hotel, while O'Sullivan, U , and I 

ascended the Great Orme's Head. There are copper- 
mines here, and we heard of a large cave, with stalac- 
tites, but did not go so far as that. We found the old 
shaft of a mine, however, and threw stones down it, 
and counted twenty before we heard them strike the 
bottom. At the base of the Head, on the side oppo- 
site the village, we saw a small church with a broken 
roof, and horizontal gravestones of slate within the 
stone enclosure around it. The view from the hill 
was most beautiful, — a blue summer sea, with the 
distant trail of smoke from a steamer, and many 
snowy sails ; in another direction the mountains, near 
and distant, some of them with clouds below their 
peaks. 

We went to one of the mines which are still worked, 
and boys came running to meet us with specimens of 
the copper ore for sale. The miners were not now 
hoisting ore from the shaft, but were washing and 
selecting the valuable fragments from great heaps of 
crumbled stone and earth. All about this spot there 
are shafts and well-holes, looking fearfully deep and 
black, and without the slightest protection, so that we 
might just as easily have walked into them as not. 



524 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

Having examined these matters sufficiently, we de- 
scended the hill towards the village, meeting parties of 
visitors, mounted on donkeys, which is a much more 
sensible way of ascending in a hot day than to walk. 
On the sides and summit of the hill we found yellow 
gorse, — heath of two colors, I think, and very beauti- 
ful, — and here and there a harebell. Owing to the 
long-continued dry weather, the grass was getting with- 
ered and brown, though not so much so as on Amer- 
ican hill-pastures at this season. Returning to the 
village, we all went into a confectioner's shop, and 
made a good luncheon. The two prettiest young ladies 
whom I have seen in England came into the shop and 
ate cakes while we were there. They appeared to be 
living together in a lodging-house, and ordered some 
of their housekeeping articles from the confectioner. 
Next we went into the village bazaar, — a sort of tent 
or open shop, full of knick-knacks and gewgaws, and 
bought some playthings for the children. At half 
past one we took our seats in the omnibus, to return 
to Conway. 

We had as yet only seen the castle wall and the 
exterior of the castle ; now we were to see the inside. 
Right at the foot of it an old woman has her stand for 
the sale of lithographic views of Conway and other 
places ; but these views are ridiculously inadequate, 
so that we did not buy any of them. The admittance 
into the castle is by a wooden door of modern con- 
struction, and the present seneschal is, I believe, the 
sexton of a church. He remembered me as having 
been there a month or two ago ; and probably, con- 
sidering that I was already initiated, or else because 
he had many other visitors, he left us to wander about 
the castle at will. It is altogether impossible to de« 



1854.] CONWAY CASTLE. 525 

scribe Conway Castle. Nothing ever can have been 
so perfect in its own style, and for its own purposes, 
when it was first built ; and now nothing else can be 
so perfect as a picture of ivy-grown, peaceful ruin. 
The banqueting-hall, all open to the sky, and with 
thick curtains of ivy tapestrying the walls, and grass 
and weeds growing on the arches that overpass it, is 
indescribably beautiful. The hearthstones of the great 
old fireplaces, all about the castle, seem to be favorite 
spots for weeds to grow. There are eight large round 
towers, and out of four of them, I think, rise smaller 
towers, ascending to a much greater height, and once 
containing winding staircases, all of which are now 
broken, and inaccessible from below, though, in at 
least one of the towers, the stairs seemed perfect, high 
aloft. It must have been the rudest violence that 
broke down these stairs ; for each step was a thick 
and heavy slab of stone, built into the wall of the 
tower. There is no such thing as a roof in any part ; 
towers, hall, kitchen, all are open to the sky. One 
round tower, directly overhanging the railway, is so 
shattered by the falling away of the lower part, that 
you can look quite up into it and through it, while 
sitting in the cars ; and yet it has stood thus, without 
falling into complete ruin, for more than two hundred 
years. I think that it was in this tower that we found 
the castle oven, an immense cavern, big enough to bake 
bread for an army. The railway passes exactly at the 
base of the high rock, on which this part of the castle 
is situated, and goes into the town through a great 
arch that has been opened in the castle wall. The 
tubular bridge across the Conway has been built in a 
style that accords with the old architecture, and I ob- 
served that one little sprig of ivy had rooted itself in 
the new structure. 



526 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

There are numberless intricate passages in the thick- 
ness of the castle walls, forming communications be- 
tween tower and tower, — damp, chill passages, with 
rough stone on either hand, darksome, and very likely 
leading to dark pitfalls. The thickness of the walls 
is amazing ; and the people of those days must have 
been content with very scanty light, so small were the 
apertures, — sometimes merely slits and loopholes, 
glimmering through many feet of thickness of stone. 
One of the towers was said to have been the residence 
of Queen Eleanor ; and this was better lighted than 
the others, containing an oriel-window, looking out of 
a little oratory, as it seemed to be, with groined arches 
and traces of ornamental sculpture, so that we could 
dress up some imperfect image of a queenly chamber, 
though the tower was roofless and floorless. There 
was another pleasant little windowed nook, close .be- 
side the oratory, where the Queen might have sat sew- 
ing or looking down the river Conway at the pictur- 
esque headlands towards the sea. We imagined her 
stately figure in antique robes, standing beneath the 
groined arches of the oratory. There seem to have 
been three chambers, one above another, in these tow- 
ers, and the one in which was the embowed window 
was the middle one. I suppose the diameter of each 
of these circular rooms could not have been more than 
twenty feet on the inside. All traces of wood-work 
and iron- work are quite gone from the whole castle. 
These are said to have been taken away by a Lord 
Conway in the reign of Charles II. There is a grassy 
space under the windows of Queen Eleanor's tower, — 
a sort of outwork of the castle, where probably, when 
no enemy was near, the Queen used to take the open 
air in summer afternoons like this. Here we sat down 



1854.] CONWAY CASTLE. 527 

on the grass of the ruined wall, and agreed that noth- 
ing in the world could be so beautiful and picturesque 
as Conway Castle, and that never could there have 
been so fit a time to see it as this sunny, quiet, lovely 
afternoon. Sunshine adapts itself to the character of 
a ruin in a wonderful way ; it does not " flout the 
ruins gray," as Scott says, but sympathizes with their 
decay, and saddens itself for their sake. It beautifies 
the ivy too. 

We saw, at the corner of this grass-plot around 
Queen Eleanor's tower, a real trunk of a tree of ivy, 
with so stalwart a stem, and such a vigorous grasp of 
its strong branches, that it would be a very efficient 
support to the wall, were it otherwise inclined to fall. 
Oh that we could have ivy in America ! What is there 
to beautify us when our time of ruin comes ? 

Before departing, we made the entire circuit of the 
castle on its walls, and O* Sullivan and I climbed by a 
ladder to the top of one of the towers. While there, 
we looked down into the street beneath, and saw a 
photographist preparing to take a view of the castle, 
and calling out to some little girl in some niche or on 
some pinnacle of the walls to stand still that he might 
catch her figure and face. I think it added to the 
impressiveness of the old castle, to see the streets and 
the kitchen-gardens and the homely dwellings that 
had grown up within the precincts of this feudal for- 
tress, and the people of to-day following their little 
businesses about it. This does not destroy the charm ; 
but tourists and idle visitors do impair it. The ear- 
nest life of to-day, however, petty and homely as it 
may be, has a right to its place alongside of what is 
left of the life of other days ; and if it be vulgar it- 
self, it does not vulgarize the scene. But tourists do 
vulgarize it ; and I suppose we did so, just like others. 



528 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

We took the train back to Rhyl, where we arrived 
at about four o'clock, and, having dined, we again 
took the rail for Chester, and thence to Rock Park 
(that is, O'Sullivan and I), and reached home at 
about eleven o'clock. 

Yesterday, September 13th, I began to wear a watch 
from Bennet's, 65 Cheapside, London. W. C. Bennet 
warrants it as the best watch which they can produce. 
If it prove as good and as durable as he prophesies, 
J — — will find it a perfect time-keeper long after his 
father has done with Time. If I had not thought of 
his wearing it hereafter, I should have been content 
with a much inferior one. No. 39,620. 

September 20th. — I went back to Rhyl last Friday 
in the steamer. We arrived at the landing-place at 
nearly four o'clock, having started at twelve, and I 
walked thence to our lodgings, 18 West Parade. The 
children and their mother were all gone out, and I sat 
some time in our parlor before anybody came. The 
next morning I made an excursion in the omnibus as 
far as Ruthin, passing through Rhyddlan, St. Asaph, 
Denbigh, and reaching Ruthin at one o'clock. All 
these are very ancient places. St. Asaph has a cathe- 
dral which is not quite worthy of that name, but is a 
very large and stately church in excellent repair. Its 
square battlemented tower has a very line appearance, 
crowning the clump of village houses on the hill-top, 
as you approach from Rhyddlan. The ascent of the 
hill is very steep ; so it is at Denbigh and at Ruthin, 
— the steepest streets, indeed, that I ever climbed. 
Denbigh is a place of still more antique aspect than 
St. Asaph ; it looks, I think, even older than Chester, 



1854.] RUTHIN. 529 

witH its gabled houses, many of their windows open- 
ing on hinges, and their fronts resting on pillars, with 
an open porch beneath. The castle makes an admira- 
bly ruinous figure on the hill, higher than the village. 
I had come hither with the purpose of inspecting it, 
but as it began to rain just then, I concluded to get 
into the omnibus and go to Ruthin. There was an- 
other steep ascent from the commencement of the long 
street of Ruthin, till I reached the market-place, which 
is of nearly triangular shape, and an exceedingly old- 
looking place. Houses of stone or plastered brick ; 
one or two with timber frames ; the roofs of an uneven 
line, and bulging out or sinking in ; the slates moss- 
grown. Some of them have two peaks and even three 
in a row, fronting on the streets, and there is a stone 
market -house with a table of regulations. In this 
market-place there is said to be a stone on which 
King Arthur beheaded one of his enemies ; but this I 
did not see. All these villages were very lively, as 
the omnibus drove in; and I rather imagine it was 
market-day in each of them, — there being quite a 
bustle of Welsh people. The old women came round 
the omnibus courtesying and intimating their willing- 
ness to receive alms, — witch-like women, such as one 
sees in pictures or reads of in romances, and very un- 
like anything feminine in America. Their style of 
dress cannot have changed for centuries. It was quite 
unexpected to me to hear Welsh so universally and 
familiarly spoken. Everybody spoke it. The omni- 
bus-driver could speak but imperfect English ; there 
was a jabber of Welsh all through the streets and 
market-places ; and it flowed out with a freedom quite 
different from the way in which they expressed them- 
selves in English. I had had an idea that Welsh was 

TOL. VII. 84 



530 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

spoken rather as a freak and in fun than as a native 
language ; it was so strange to find another language 
the people's actual and earnest medium of thought 
within so short a distance of England. But English 
is scarcely more known to the body of the Welsh 
people than to the peasantry of France. Moreover, 
they sometimes pretend to ignorance, when they might 
speak it fairly enough. 

I took luncheon at the hotel where the omnibus 
stopped, and then went to search out the castle. It 
appears to have been once extensive, but the remains 
of it are now very few, except a part of the external 
wall. Whatever other portion may still exist, has 
been built into a modern castellated mansion, which 
has risen within the wide circuit of the fortress, — a 
handsome and spacious edifice of red freestone, with 
a high tower, on which a flag was flying. The grounds 
were well laid out in walks, and really I think the 
site of the castle could not have been turned to better 
account. I am getting tired of antiquity. It is cer- 
tainly less interesting in the long run than novelty ; 
and so I was well content with the fresh, warm, red 
hue of the modern house, and the unworn outline of 
its walls, and its cheerful, large windows; and was 
willing that the old ivy-grown ruins should exist now 
only to contrast with the modernisms. These ancient 
walls, by the by, are of immense thickness. There 
is a passage through the interior of a portion of them, 
the width from this interior passage to the outer one 
being fifteen feet on one side, and I know not how 
much on the other. 

It continued showery all day ; and the omnibus was 
crowded. I had chosen the outside from Rhyl to Den- 
bigh, but, all the rest of the journey, imprisoned my- 



1854.] RHYDDLAN. 531 

self within. On our way home, an old lady got into 
the omnibus, — a lady of tremendous rotundity ; and 
as she tumbled from the door to the farthest part of 
the carriage, she kept advising all the rest of the pas- 
sengers to get out. " I don't think there will be much 
rain, gentlemen," quoth she ; " you '11 be much more 
comfortable on the outside." As none of us complied, 
she glanced along the seats. " What ! are you all 
Saas'nach ? " she inquired. As we drove along, she 
talked Welsh with great fluency to one of the passen- 
gers, a young woman with a baby, and to as many 
others as could understand her. It has a strange, wild 
sound, like a language half blown away by the wind. 
The lady's English was very good ; but she probably 
prided herself on her proficiency in Welsh. My ex- 
cursion to-day had been along the valley of the Clwyd, 
a very rich and fertile tract of country. 

The next day we all took a long walk on the beach, 
picking up shells. 

On Monday we took an open carriage and drove to 
Rhyddlan ; whence we sent back the carriage, mean- 
ing to walk home along the embankment of the river 
Clwyd, after inspecting the castle. The fortress is 
very ruinous, having been dismantled by the Parlia- 
mentarians. There are great gaps, — two, at least, 
in the walls that connect the round towers, of which 
there were six, one on each side of a gateway in 
front, and the same at a gateway towards the river, 
where there is a steep descent to a wall and square 
tower, at the water- side. Great pains and a great 
deal of gunpowder must have been used in converting 
this castle into a ruin. There were one or two frag:- 
ments lying where they had fallen more than two hun- 
dred years ago, which, though merely a conglomera- 



532 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

tion of small stones and mortar, were just as hard as 
if they had been solid masses of granite. The sub- 
stantial thickness of the walls is composed of these 
agglomerated small stones and mortar, the casing be- 
ing hewn blocks of red freestone. This is much worn 
away by the weather, wherever it has been exposed to 
the air ; but, under shelter, it looks as if it might have 
been hewn only a year or two ago. Each of the round 
towers had formerly a small staircase turret rising 
beside and ascending above it, in which a warder 
might be posted, but they have all been so battered 
and shattered that it is impossible for an uninstructed 
observer to make out a satisfactory plan of them. The 
interior of each tower was a small room, not more 
than twelve or fifteen feet across ; and of these there 
seem to have been three stories, with loop-holes for 
archery, and not much other light than what came 
through them. Then there are various passages and 
nooks and corners and square recesses in the stone, 
some of which must have been intended for dungeons, 
and the ugliest and gloomiest dungeons imaginable, 
for they could not have had any light or air. There 
is not the least splinter of wood-work remaining in 
any part of the castle, — nothing but bare stone, and 
a little plaster, in one or two places, on the wall. In 
the front gateway we looked at the groove on each 
side, in which the portcullis used to rise and fall ; and 
in each of the contiguous round towers there was a 
loop-hole, whence an enemy on the outer side of the 
portcullis might be shot through with an arrow. 

The inner court-yard is a parallelogram, nearly a 
square, and is about forty-five of my paces across. It 
is entirely grass-grown, and vacant, except for two or 
three trees that have been recently set out, and which 



1854.] RHYDDLAN. 533 

are surrounded with palings to keep away the cows 
that pasture in and about the place. No window 
looks from the walls or towers into this court-yard ; 
nor are there any traces of buildings having stood 
within the enclosure, unless it be what looks some- 
thing like the flue of a chimney within one of the 
walls. I should suppose, however, that there must 
have been, when the castle was in its perfect state, a 
hall, a kitchen, and other commodious apartments and 
offices for the King and his train, such as there were 
at Conway and Beaumaris. But if so, all fragments 
have been carried away, and all hollows of the old 
foundations scrupulously filled up. The round tow- 
ers could not have comprised all the accommodation 
of the castle. There is nothing more striking in these 
ruins than to look upward from the crumbling base, 
and see flights of stairs, still comparatively perfect, by 
which you might securely ascend to the upper heights 
of the tower, although all traces of a staircase have 
disappeared below, and the upper portion cannot be 
attained. On three sides of the fortress is a moat, 
about sixty feet wide, and cased with stone. It was 
probably of great depth in its day, but it is now partly 
filled up with earth, and is quite dry and grassy 
throughout its whole extent. On the inner side of the 
moat was the outer wall of the castle, portions of 
which still remain. Between the outer wall and the 
castle itself the space is also about sixty feet. 

The day was cloudy and lowering, and there were 
several little spatterings of rain, while we rambled 
about. The two children ran shouting hither and 
thither, and were continually clambering into danger- 
ous places, racing along ledges of broken wall. At 
last they altogether disappeared for a good while ; 



534 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

their voices, which had heretofore been plainly audi- 
ble, were hushed, nor was there any answer when we 
began to call them, while making ready for our de- 
parture. But they finally appeared, coming out of the 
moat, where they had been picking and eating black- 
berries, — which, they said, grew very plentifully there, 
and which they were very reluctant to leave. Before 
quitting the castle, I must not forget the ivy, which 
makes a perfect tapestry over a large portion of the 
walls. 

We walked about the village, which is old and ugly ; 
small, irregular streets, contriving to be intricate, 
though there are few of them ; mean houses, joining 
to each other. We saw, in the principal one, the par- 
liament house in which Edward I. gave a Charter, or 
allowed rights of some kind to his Welsh subjects. 
The ancient part of its wall is entirely distinguishable 
from what has since been built upon it. 

Thence we set out to walk along the embankment, 
although the sky looked very threatening. The wind, 
however, was so strong, and had such a full sweep at 
us, on the top of the bank, that we decided on taking 
a path that led from it across the moor. But we soon 
had cause to repent of this ; for, which way soever we 
turned, we found ourselves cut off by a ditch or a 
little stream ; so that here we were fairly astray on 
Rhyddlan moor, the old battle-field of the Saxons and 
Britons, and across which, I suppose, the fiddlers and 
mountebanks had marched to the relief of the Earl of 
Chester. Anon, too, it began to shower ; and it was 
only after various leaps and scramblings that we made 
our way to a large farm-house, and took shelter under 
a cart -shed. The back of the house to which we 
gained access was very dirty and ill-kept ; some dirty 



1854.] RHYDDLAN. 535 

children peeped at us as we approached, and nobody 
had the civility to ask us in ; so we took advantage of 
the first cessation of the shower to resume our way. 
We were shortly overtaken by a very intelligent-look- 
ing and civil man, who seemed to have come from 
Rhyddlan, and said he was going to Ehyl. We fol- 
lowed his guidance over stiles and along hedge-row 
paths which we never could have threaded rightly by 
ourselves. 

By and by our kind guide had to stop at an inter- 
mediate farm ; but he gave us full directions how to 
proceed, and we went on till it began to shower again 
pretty briskly, and we took refuge in a little bit of old 
stone cottage, which, small as it was, had a greater an- 
tiquity than any mansion in America. The door was 
open, and as we approached, we saw several children 
gazing at us ; and their mother, a pleasant-looking 
woman, who seemed rather astounded at the visit that 
was about to befall her, tried to draw a tattered cur- 
tain over a part of her interior, which she fancied even 
less fit to be seen than the rest. To say the truth, the 
house was not at all better than a pigsty ; and while 
we sat there, a pig came familiarly to the door, thrust 
in his snout, and seemed surprised that he should be 
driven away, instead of being admitted as one of the 
family. The floor was of brick ; there was no ceiling, 
but only the peaked gable overhead. The room was 
kitchen, parlor, and, I suppose, bedroom for the whole 
family ; at all events, there was only the tattered cur* 
tain between us and the sleeping accommodations. 
The good woman either could not or would not speak 

a word of English, only laughing when S said, 

44 Dim Sassenach ? " but she was kind and hospitable, 
and found a chair for each of us. She had been mak- 



536 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

ing some bread, and the dough was on the dresser. 
Life with these people is reduced to its simplest ele- 
ments. It is only a pity that they cannot or do not 
choose to keep themselves cleaner. Poverty, except 
in cities, need not be squalid. When the shower 
abated a little, we gave all the pennies we had to the 
children, and set forth again. By the by, there were 
several colored prints stuck up against the walls, and 
there was a clock ticking in a corner, and some paper- 
hangings pinned upon the slanting roof. 

It began to rain again before we arrived at Rhyl, 
and we were driven into a small tavern. After stay- 
ing there awhile, we set forth between the drops; 
but the rain fell still heavier, so that we were pretty 
well damped before we got to our lodgings. After 
dinner, I took the rail for Chester and Rock Park, 

and S and the children and maid followed the 

next day. 

September 22d. — I dined on Wednesday evening 
at Mr. John Hey wood's, Norris Green. Mr. Monck- 
ton Milnes and lady were of the company. Mr. 
Milnes is a very agreeable, kindly man, resembling 
Longfellow a good deal in personal appearance ; and 
he promotes, by his genial manners, the same pleasant 
intercourse which is so easily established with Long- 
fellow. He is said to be a very kind patron of lit- 
erary men, and to do a great deal of good among 
young and neglected people of that class. He is con- 
sidered one of the best conversationists at present in 
society : it may very well be so ; his style of talking 
being very simple and natural, anything but obtru- 
sive, so that you might enjoy its agreeableness without 
suspecting it. He introduced me to his wife (a daugh- 



1854.] LIVERPOOL. \ 537 

ter of Lord Crewe), with whom and \imself I had a 
good deal of talk. . . . Mr. Milnes tolsl me that he 
owns the land in Yorkshire, whence som& of the pil- 
grims of the Mayflower emigrated to Plymouth, and 
that Elder Brewster was the Postmaster of the village. 
... He also said that in the next voyage of the May* 
flower, after she carried the Pilgrims, she wa§ em- 
ployed in transporting a cargo of slaves from Africa, 

— to the West Indies, I suppose. This is a queer 
fact, and would be nuts for the Southerners. 

Mem. — An American would never understand the 
passage in Bunyan about Christian and Hopeful going 
astray along a by-path into the grounds of Giant De- 
spair, — from there being no stiles and by-paths in our 
country. 

September 26th. — On Saturday evening my wife 
and I went to a soiree given by the Mayor and Mrs. 
Lloyd at the Town Hall to receive the Earl of Har- 
rowby. It was quite brilliant, the public rooms being 
really magnificent, and adorned for the occasion with 
a large collection of pictures, belonging to Mr. Naylor. 
They were mostly, if not entirely, of modern artists, 

— of Turner, Wilkie, Landseer, and others of the best 
English painters. Turner's seemed too ethereal to 
have been done by mortal hands. 

The British Scientific Association being now in ses- 
sion here, many distinguished strangers were present. 



September 29th. — Mr. Monckton Milnes called on 
me at the Consulate day before yesterday. He is 
pleasant and sensible. . . . Speaking of American pol- 



538 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

iticians, I remarked that they were seldom anything 
but politicians, and had no literary or other culture 
beyond their own calling. He said the case was the 

same in England, and instanced Sir , who 

once called on him for information when an appeal 
had been made to him respecting two literary gentle- 
men. Sir had never heard the names of 

either of these gentlemen, and applied to Mr. Milnes, 
as being somewhat conversant with the literary class, 
to know whether they were distinguished and what 
were their claims. The names of the two literary men 
were James Sheridan Knowles and Alfred Tennyson. 

October 5th. — Yesterday I was present at a dejeu- 
ner on board the James Barnes, on occasion of her 
coming under the British flag, having been built for 
the Messrs. Barnes by Donald McKay of Boston. She 
is a splendid vessel, and magnificently fitted up, though 
not with consummate taste. It would be worth while 
that ornamental architects and upholsterers should 
study this branch of art, since the ship-builders seem 
willing to expend a good deal of money on it. In 
fact, I do not see that there is anywhere else so much 
encouragement to the exercise of ornamental art. I 
saw nothing to criticise in the solid and useful details 
of the ship ; the ventilation, in particular, being free 
and abundant, so that the hundreds of passengers who 
will have their berths between decks, and at a still 
lower depth, will have good air and enough of it. 

There were four or five hundred persons, princi- 
pally Liverpool merchants and their wives, invited to 
the dejeuner; and the tables were spread between 
decks, the berths for passengers not being yet put in. 
There was not quite light enough to make the scene 



1853.] LIVERPOOL. 539 

cheerful, it being an overcast day ; and, indeed, there 
was an English plainness in the arrangement of the 
festal room, which might have been better exchanged 
for the flowery American taste, which I have just been 
criticising. With flowers, and the arrangement of 
flags, we should have made something very pretty of 
the space between decks ; but there was nothing to 
hide the fact, that in a few days hence there would be 
crowded berths and sea-sick steerage passengers where 
we were now feasting. The cheer was very good, — 
cold fowl and meats ; cold pies of foreign manufacture, 
very rich, and of mysterious composition ; and cham- 
pagne in plenty, with other wines for those who liked 
them. 

I sat between two ladies, one of them Mrs. , a 

pleasant young woman, who, I believe, is of American 
provincial nativity, and whom I therefore regarded as 
half a countrywoman. We talked a good deal to- 
gether, and I confided to her my annoyance at the 
prospect of being called up to answer a toast ; but she 
did not pity me at all, though she felt much alarm 

about her husband, Captain — , who was in the 

same predicament. Seriously, it is the most awful 
part of my official duty, — this necessity of making 
dinner-speeches at the Mayor's, and other public or 
semi-public tables. However, my neighborhood to 

Mrs. was good for me, inasmuch as by laughing 

over the matter with her I came to regard it in a light 
and ludicrous way; and so, when the time actually 
came, I stood up with a careless dare-devil feeling. 
The chairman toasted the President immediately after 
the Queen, and did me the honor to speak of myself 
in a most flattering manner, something like this: 
M Great by his position under the Republic, — greater 



540 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

still, I am bold to say, in the Republic of letters! " 
I made no reply at all to this ; in truth, I forgot all 
about it when I began to speak, and merely thanked 
the company in behalf of the President and my coun- 
trymen, and made a few remarks with no very de- 
cided point to them. However, they cheered and ap- 
plauded* and I took advantage of the applause to sit 
down, and Mrs. informed me that I had suc- 
ceeded admirably. It was no success at all, to be 
sure ; neither was it a failure, for I had aimed at noth- 
ing, and I had exactly hit it. But after sitting down, 
I was conscious of an enjoyment in speaking to a pub- 
lic assembly, and felt as if I should like to rise again. 
It is something like being under fire, — a sort of ex- 
citement, not exactly pleasure, but more piquant than 
most pleasures. I have felt this before, in the same 
circumstances ; but, while on my legs, my impulse is to 
get through with my remarks and sit down again as 
quickly as possible. The next speech, I think, was by 
Rev. Dr. , the celebrated Arctic gentleman, in re- 
ply to a toast complimentary to the clergy. He turned 
aside from the matter in hand to express his kind feel- 
ings towards America, where he said he had been most 
hospitably received, especially at Cambridge Univer- 
sity. He also made allusions to me, and I suppose it 
would have been no more than civil in me to have an- 
swered with a speech in acknowledgment, but I did not 
choose to make another venture, so merely thanked 
him across the corner of the table, for he sat near me. 
He is a venerable - looking, white-haired gentleman, 
tall and slender, with a pale, intelligent, kindly face. 

Other speeches were made ; but from beginning to 
end there was not one breath of eloquence, nor even 
one neat sentence ; and I rather think that English. 



1854.] LIVERPOOL. 541 

men would purposely avoid eloquence or neatness in 
after-dinner speeches. It seems to be no part of their 
object. Yet any Englishman almost, much more gen- 
erally than Americans, will stand up and talk on in a 
plain way, uttering one rough, ragged, and shapeless 
sentence after another, and will have expressed him- 
self sensibly, though in a very rude manner, before he 
sits down. And this is quite satisfactory to his audi- 
ence, who, indeed, are rathev prejudiced against the 
man who speaks too glibly. 

The guests began to depart shortly after three 
o'clock. This morning I have seen two reports of my 
little speech, — one exceedingly incorrect ; another 
pretty exact, but not much to my taste, for I seem to 
have left out everything that would have been fittest 
to say. 

October 6th. — The people, for several days, have 
been in the utmost anxiety, and latterly, in the highest 
exultation, about Sebastopol, — and all England, and 
Europe to boot, have been fooled by the belief that it 
had fallen. This, however, now turns out to be incor- 
rect ; and the public visage is somewhat grim in con- 
sequence* I am glad of it. In spite of his actual sym- 
pathies, it is impossible for a true American to be 
otherwise than glad. Success makes an Englishman 
intolerable; and, already, on the mistaken idea that the 
way was open to the prosperous conclusion of the war, 
The "Times" had begun to throw out menaces against 
America. I shall never love England till she sues to 
us for help, and, in the mean time, the fewer triumphs 
she obtains, the better for all parties. An English- 
man in adversity is a very respectable character ; he 
does not lose his dignity, but merely comes to a proper 



542 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

conception of himself. It is rather touching to an ob- 
server, to see how much the universal heart is in this 
matter, — to see the merchants gathering round the 
telegraphic messages, posted on the pillars of the Ex- 
change news-room, — the people in the street who can- 
not afford to buy a paper clustering round the win- 
dows of the news-offices, where a copy is pinned up, — 
the groups of corporals and sergeants at the recruiting 
rendezvous, with a newspaper in the midst of them, — 
and all earnest and sombre, and feeling like one man 
together, whatever their rank. I seem to myself like 
a spy or a traitor, when I meet their eyes, and am con- 
scious that I neither hope nor fear in sympathy with 
them, although they look at me in full confidence of 
sympathy. Their heart " knoweth its own bitterness," 
and as for me, being a stranger and an alien, I " inter- 
meddle not with their joy." 

October 9th. — My ancestor left England in 1630. 
I return in 1853. I sometimes feel as if I myself had 
been absent these two hundred and twenty-three years, 
leaving England emerging from the feudal system, and 
finding it, on my return, on the verge of republican- 
ism. It brings the two far-separated points of time 
very closely together to view the matter thus. 



October 16th. — A day or two ago arrived the sad 
news of the loss of the Arctic by collision with a 
French steamer off Newfoundland, and the loss also 
of three or four hundred people. I have seldom been 
more affected by anything quite alien from my per- 
sonal and friendly concerns, than by the death of Cap- 
tain Luce and his son. The boy was a delicate lad, 



1854.] LIVERPOOL. 543 

and it is said that he had never been absent from his 
mother till this time, when his father had taken him 
to England to consult a physician about a complaint 
in his hip. So his father, while the ship was sinking, 
was obliged to decide whether he would put the poor, 
weakly, timorous child on board the boat, to take his 
hard chance of life there, or keep him to go down with 
himself and the ship. He chose the latter; and within 
half an hour, I suppose, the boy was among the child- 
angels. Captain Luce could not do less than die, for 
his own part, with the responsibility of all those lost 
lives upon him. He may not have been in the least 
to blame for the calamity, but it was certainly too 
heavy a one for him to survive. He was a sensible 
man, and a gentleman, courteous, quiet, with some- 
thing almost melancholy in his address and aspect. 
Oftentimes he has come into my inner office to say 
good-by before his departures, but I cannot precisely 
remember whether or no he took leave of me before 
this latest voyage. I never exchanged a great many 
words with him ; but those were kind ones. 



October l§th. — It appears to be customary for peo- 
ple of decent station, but in distressed circumstances, 
to go round among their neighbors and the public, 
accompanied by a friend, who explains the case. I 
have been accosted in the street in regard to one of 
these matters ; and to-day there came to my office a 
grocer, who had become security for a friend, and who 
was threatened with an execution, — with another gro- 
cer for supporter and advocate. The beneficiary takes 
very little active part in the affair, merely looking 
careworn, distressed, and pitiable, and throwing in a 



544 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

word of corroboration, or a sigh, or an acknowledg- 
ment, as the case may demand. In the present in- 
stance, the friend, a young, respectable-looking trades- 
man, with a Lancashire accent, spoke freely and sim- 
ply of his client's misfortunes, not pressing the case 
unduly, but doing it full justice, and saying, at the 
close of the interview, that it was no pleasant business 
for himself. The broken grocer was an elderly man, 
of somewhat sickly aspect. The whole matter is very 
foreign to American habits. No respectable American 
would think of retrieving his affairs by such means, 
but would prefer ruin ten times over ; no friend would 
take up his cause ; no public would think it worth 
while to prevent the small catastrophe. And yet the 
custom is not without its good side, as indicating a 
closer feeling of brotherhood, a more efficient sense of 
neighborhood, than exists among ourselves, although, 
perhaps, we are more careless of a fellow -creature's 
ruin, because ruin with us is by no means the fatal and 
irretrievable event that it is in England. 

I am impressed with the ponderous and imposing 
look of an English legal document, — an assignment 
of real estate in England, for instance, — engrossed on 
an immense sheet of thickest paper, in a formal hand, 
beginning with " This Indenture " in German text, 
and with occasional phrases of form, breaking out into 
large script, — very long and repetitious, fortified with 
the Mayor of Manchester's seal, two or three inches in 
diameter, which is certified by a notary-public, whose 
signature, again, is to have my consular certificate and 
official seal. 

November 2d, — A young Frenchman enters, of gen. 



1854.] LIVERPOOL. - 545 

tlemanly aspect, with a grayish cloak or paletot over- 
spreading his upper person, and a handsome and well- 
made pair of black trousers and well-fitting boots be- 
low. On sitting down, he does not throw off nor at 
all disturb the cloak. Eying him more closely, one 
discerns that he has no shirt-collar, and that what little 
is visible of his shirt-bosom seems not to be of to-day 
nor of yesterday, — perhaps not even of the day before. 
His manners are very good ; nevertheless, he is a cox- 
comb and a jackanapes. He avers himself a natural- 
ized citizen of America, where he has been tutor in 
several families of distinction, and has been treated 
like a son. He left America on account of his health, 
and came near being tutor in the Duke of Norfolk's 
family, but failed for lack of testimonials ; he is ex- 
ceedingly capable and accomplished, but reduced in 
funds, and wants employment here, or the means of 
returning to America, where he intends to take a situ- 
ation under government, which he is sure of obtaining. 
He mentioned a quarrel which he had recently had 
with an Englishman in behalf of America, and would 
have fought a duel had such been the custom of the 
country. He made the Englishman foam at the mouth, 
and told him that he had been twelve years at a mili- 
tary school, and could easily kill him. I say to him 
that I see little or no prospect of his getting employ- 
ment here, but offer to inquire whether any situation, 
as clerk or otherwise, can be obtained for him in a 
vessel returning to America, and ask his address. He 
has no address. Much to my surprise, he takes his 
leave without requesting pecuniary aid, but hints that 
he shall call again. 

He is a very disagreeable young fellow, like scores 
of others who call on me in the like situation. His 

vol. vii. 35 



546 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

English is very good for a Frenchman, and he says he 
speaks it the least well of five languages. He has 
been three years in America, and obtained his natu- 
ralization papers, he says, as a special favor, and by 
means of strong interest. Nothing is so absolutely 
odious as the sense of freedom and equality pertain- 
ing to an American grafted on the mind of a native of 
any other country in the world. A naturalized citizen 
is hateful. Nobody has a right to our ideas, unless 
born to them. 

November 9th. — I lent the above Frenchman a 
small sum ; he advertised for employment as a teach- 
er ; and he called this morning to thank me for my 
aid, and says Mr. C— has engaged him for his chil- 
dren, at a guinea a week, and that he has also another 
engagement. The poor fellow seems to have been 
brought to a very low ebb. He has pawned every- 
thing, even to his last shirt, save the one he had on, 
and had been living at the rate of twopence a day. 
I had procured him a chance to return to America, 
but he was ashamed to go back in such poor circum- 
stances, and so determined to seek better fortune here. 
I like him better than I did, — partly, I suppose, be- 
cause I have helped him. 

November 14tfA. — The other day I saw an elderly 
gentleman walking in Dale Street, apparently in a 
state of mania ; for as he limped along (being afflicted 
with lameness) he kept talking to himself, and some- 
times breaking out into a threat against some casual 
passenger. He was a very respectable-looking man ; 
and I remember to have seen him last summer, in the 
steamer, returning from the Isle of Man, where he 



1854.] LIVERPOOL. 547 

had been staying at Castle Mona. What a strange 
and ngly predicament it would be for a person of 
quiet habits to be suddenly smitten with lunacy at 
noonday in a crowded street, and to walk along 
through a dim maze of extravagances, — partly con- 
scious of them, but unable to resist the impulse to give 
way to them ! A long- suppressed nature might be rep- 
resented as bursting out in this way, for want of any 
other safety-valve. 

In America, people seem to consider the govern- 
ment merely as a political administration ; and they 
care nothing for the credit of it, unless it be the ad- 
ministration of their own political party. In Eng- 
land, all people, of whatever party, are anxious for 
the credit of their rulers. Our government, as a knot 
of persons, changes so entirely every four years, that 
the institution has come to be considered a temporary 
thing. 

Looking at the moon the other evening, little R 

said, " It blooms out in the morning I " taking the 
moon to be the bud of the sun. 

The English are a most intolerant people. Nobody 
is permitted, nowadays, to have any opinion but the 
prevalent one. There seems to be very little differ- 
ence between their educated and ignorant classes in 
this respect; if any, it is to the credit of the latter, 
who do not show tokens of such extreme interest in 
the war. It is agreeable, however, to observe how all 
Englishmen pull together, — how each man comes for- 
ward with his little scheme for helping on the war, — 
how they feel themselves members of one family, talk- 



548 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1854. 

ing together about their common interest, as if they 
were gathered around one fireside ; and then what a 
hearty meed of honor they award to their soldiers ! 
It is worth facing death for. Whereas, in America, 
when our soldiers fought as good battles, with as great 
proportionate loss, and far more valuable triumphs, 
the country seemed rather ashamed than proud of 
them. 

Mrs. Heywood tells me that there are many Catho- 
lics among the lower classes in Lancashire and Chesh- 
ire, — probably the descendants of retainers of the old 
Catholic nobility and gentry, who are more numerous 
in the shires than in other parts of England. The 
present Lord Sef ton's grandfather was the first of that 
race who became Protestant. 

December 25th. — Commodore P — — called to see 
me this morning, — a brisk, gentlemanly, offhand, but 
not rough, unaffected, and sensible man, looking not 
so elderly as he ought, on account of a very well made 
wig. He is now on his return from a cruise in the 
East Indian seas, and goes home by the Baltic, with a 
prospect of being very well received on account of his 
treaty with Japan. I seldom meet with a man who 
puts himself more immediately on conversable terms 
than the Commodore. He soon introduced his partic- 
ular business with me, — it being to inquire whether 
I would recommend some suitable person to prepare 
his notes and materials for the publication of an ac- 
count of his voyage. He was good enough to say that 
he had fixed upon me, in his own mind, for this office ; 
but that my public duties would of course prevent me 
from engaging in it. I spoke of Herman Melville, 



1854] LIVERPOOL. 549 

and one cr two others ; but lie seems to have some ac- 
quaintance with the literature of the day, and did not 
grasp very cordially at any name that I could think 
of ; nor, indeed, could I recommend any one with full 
confidence. It would be a very desirable task for a 
young literary man, or, for that matter, for an old 
one ; for the world can scarcely have in reserve a less 
hackneyed theme than Japan. 

This is a most beautiful day of English winter ; 
clear and bright, with the ground a little frozen, and 
the green grass along the waysides at Rock Ferry 
sprouting up through the frozen pools of yesterday's 
rain. England is forever green. On Christmas Day, 
the children found wall-flowers, pansies, and pinks in 
the garden ; and we had a beautiful rose from the gar- 
den of the hotel grown in the open air. Yet one is 
sensible of the cold here, as much as in the zero at- 
mosphere of America. The chief advantage of the 
English climate is that we are not tempted to heat 
our rooms to so unhealthy a degree as in New Eng- 
land. 

I think I have been happier this Christmas than 
ever before, — by my own fireside, and with my wife 
and children about me, — more content to enjoy what 
I have, — less anxious for anything beyond it in this 
life. My early life was perhaps a good preparation 
for the declining half of life ; it having been such a 
blank that any thereafter would compare favorably 
with it. For a long, long while, I have occasionally 
been visited with a singular dream ; and I have an 
impression that I have dreamed it ever since I have 
been in England. It is, that I am still at college, — 
or, sometimes, even at school, — and there is a sense 
that I have been there unconscionably long, and have 



550 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. 

quite failed to make such progress as my contempo- 
raries have done ; and I seem to meet some of them 
with a feeling of shame and depression that broods 
over me as I think of it, even when awake. This 
dream, recurring all through these twenty or thirty 
years, must be one of the effects of that heavy se- 
clusion in which I shut myself up for twelve years 
after leaving college, when everybody moved onward, 
and left me behind. How strange that it should come 
now, when I may call myself famous and prosperous ! 
— when I am happy, too ! 

January 3d, 1855. — The progress of the age is 
trampling over the aristocratic institutions of Eng- 
land, and they crumble beneath it. This war has 
given the country a vast impulse towards democracy. 
The nobility will never hereafter, I think, assume or 
be permitted to rule the nation in peace, or command 
armies in war, on any ground except the individual 
ability which may appertain to one of their number, 
as well as to a commoner. And yet the nobles were 
never positively more noble than now ; never, perhaps, 
so chivalrous, so honorable, so highly cultivated : but, 
relatively to the rest of the world, they do not main- 
tain their old place. The pressure of the war has 
tested and proved this fact, at home and abroad. At 
this moment it would be an absurdity in the nobles to 
pretend to the position which was quietly conceded to 
them a year ago. This one year has done the work 
of fifty ordinary ones ; or, more accurately, it has 
made apparent what has long been preparing itself. 

January 6th. — The American ambassador called 
Dn me to-day and stayed a good while, — an hour oi 



1855.] LIVERPOOL. 551 

two. He is visiting at Mr. William Browne's, at 
Richmond Hill, having come to this region to bring 
his niece, who is to be bride' s-maid at the wedding of 
an American girl. I like Mr. . He cannot ex- 
actly be called gentlemanly in his manners, there be- 
ing a sort of rusticity about him ; moreover, he has a 
habit of squinting one eye, and an awkward carriage 
of his head ; but, withal, a dignity in his large person, 
and a consciousness of high position and importance, 
which gives him ease and freedom. Very simple and 
frank in his address, he may be as crafty as other 
diplomatists are said to be ; but I see only good sense 
and plainness of speech, — appreciative, too, and 
genial enough to make himself conversable. He 
talked very freely of himself and of other public peo- 
ple, and of American and English affairs. He re- 
turns to America, he says, next October, and then 
retires forever from public life, being sixty-four years 
of age, and having now no desire except to write 
memoirs of his times, and especially of the adminis- 
tration of Mr. Polk. I suggested a doubt whether 
the people would permit him to retire ; and he im- 
mediately responded to my hint as regards his pros- 
pects for the Presidency. He said that his mind was 
fully made up, and that he would never be a candi- 
date, and that he had expressed this decision to his 
friends in such a way as to put it out of his own 
power to change it. He acknowledged that he should 
have been glad of the nomination for the Presidency 
in 1852, but that it was now too late, and that he was 
too old, — and, in short, he seemed to be quite sincere 
in his nolo episcojxiri ; although, really, he is the 
only Democrat, at this moment, whom it would not 
be absurd to talk of for the office. As he talked, his 



552 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. 

face flushed, and he seemed to feel inwardly excited. 
Doubtless, it was the high vision of half his lifetime 
which he here relinquished. I cannot question that 
he is sincere ; but, of course, should the people insist 
upon having him for President, he is too good a pa- 
triot to refuse. I wonder whether he can have had 
any object in saying all this to me. He might see 
that it would be perfectly natural for me to tell it to 
General Pierce. But it is a very vulgar idea, — this 
of seeing craft and subtlety, when there is a plain and 
honest aspect. 

January 9th. — I dined at Mr. William Browne's 
(M. P.) last evening with a large party. The whole 
table and dessert service was of silver. Speaking of 
Shakespeare, Mr. said that the Duke of Somer- 
set, who is now nearly fourscore, told him that the 
father of John and Charles Kemble had made all 
possible research into the events of Shakespeare's life, 
and that he had found reason to believe that Shake- 
speare attended a certain revel at Stratford, and, in- 
dulging too much in the conviviality of the occasion, 
he tumbled into a ditch on his way home, and died 
there ! The Kemble patriarch was an aged man when 
he communicated this to the Duke ; and their ages, 
linked to each other, would extend back a good way ; 
scarcely to the beginning of the last century, however. 
If I mistake not, it was from the traditions of Strat- 
ford that Kemble had learned the above. I do not 
remember ever to have seen it in print, — which is 
most singular. 

Miss L has an English rather than an Amer- 
ican aspect, — being of stronger outline than most of 
our young ladies, although handsomer than English 



1855.] LIVERPOOL. 553 

women generally, extremely self-possessed and well 
poised, without affectation or assumption, but quietly 
conscious of rank, as much so as if she were an Earl's 
daughter. In truth, she felt pretty much as an Earl's 
daughter would do towards the merchants' wives and 
daughters who made up the feminine portion of the 
party. 

I talked with her a little, and found her sensible, 
vivacious, and firm-textured, rather than soft and sen- 
timental. She paid me some compliments ; but I do 
not remember paying her any. 

Mr. J 's daughters, two pale, handsome girls, 

were present. One of them is to be married to a 

grandson of Mr. , who was also at the dinner. 

He is a small young man, with a thin and fair mus- 
tache, . . . and a lady who sat next me whispered 
that his expectations are £6,000 per annum. It 
struck me, that, being a country gentleman's son, he 
kept himself silent and reserved, as feeling himself 
too good for this commercial dinner-party; but per- 
haps, and I rather think so, he was really shy and had 
nothing to say, being only twenty-one, and therefore 
quite a boy among Englishmen. The only man of 

cognizable rank present, except Mr. and the 

Mayor of Liverpool, was a Baronet, Sir Thomas 
Birch. 

January 11th. — S and I were invited to be 

present at the wedding of Mr. J 's daughter this 

morning, but we were also bidden to the funeral ser- 
vices of Mrs. G , a young American lady ; and we 

went to the " house of mourning," rather than to the 
" house of feasting." Her death was very sudden. I 



554 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. 

crossed to Rock Ferry on Saturday, and met her hus- 
band in the boat. He said that his wife was rather un- 
well, and that he had just been sent for to see her ; but 
he did not seem at all alarmed. And yet, on reaching 
home, he found her dead ! The body is to be con- 
veyed to America, and the funeral service was read 
over her in her house, only a few neighbors and friends 
being present. We were shown into a darkened room, 
where there was a dim gas-light burning, and a fire 
glimmering, and here and there a streak of sunshine 

struggling through the drawn curtains. Mr. G — 

looked pale, and quite overcome with grief, — this, I 
suppose, being his first sorrow, — and he has a young 
baby on his hands, and no doubt feels altogether for- 
lorn in this foreign land. The clergyman entered in 
his canonicals, and we walked in a little procession 
into another room, where the coffin was placed. Mr. 

G sat down and rested his head on the coffin : the 

clergyman read the service ; then knelt down, as did 
most of the company, and prayed with great propriety 
of manner, but with no earnestness, — and we sepa- 
rated. Mr. G is a small, smooth, and pretty 

young man, not emphasized in any way ; but grief 
threw its awf ulness about him to-day in a degree which 
I should not have expected. 

January 20th. — Mr. Steele, a gentleman of Rock 
Ferry, showed me this morning a pencil-case formerly 
belonging to Dr. Johnson. It is six or seven inches 
long, of large calibre, and very clumsily manufactured 
of iron, perhaps plated in its better days, but now 
quite bare. Indeed, it looks as rough as an article of 
kitchen furniture. The intaglio on the end is a lion 
rampant. On the whole, it well became Dr. Johnsop 



1855.] LIVERPOOL. 555 

to have used such a stalwart pencil-case. It had a 
six-inch measure on a part of it, so that it must have 
been at least eight inches long. Mr. Steele says he 
has seen a cracked earthen teapot, of large size, in 
which Miss Williams used to make tea for Dr. John- 
son. 

God himself cannot compensate us for being born 
for any period short of eternity. All the misery en- 
dured here constitutes a claim for another life, and, 
still more, all the happiness ; because all true happi- 
ness involves something more than the earth owns, 
and needs something more than a mortal capacity for 
the enjoyment of it. 

After receiving an injury on the head, a person fan- 
cied all the rest of his life that he heard voices flout- 
ing, jeering, and upbraiding him. 

February 19^A. — I dined with the Mayor at the 
Town Hall last Friday evening. I sat next to Mr. W. 

J , an Irish-American merchant, who is in very 

good standing here. He told me that he used to be 
very well acquainted with General Jackson, and that 
he was present at the street fight between him and the 
Bentons, and helped to take General Jackson off the 
ground. Colonel Benton shot at him from behind ; 
but it was Jesse Benton's ball that hit him and broke 
his arm. I did not understand him to infer any 
treachery or cowardice from the circumstance of Colo- 
nel Benton's shooting at Jackson from behind, but 
suppose it occurred in the confusion and excitement 

of the street fight. Mr. W. J seems to think that, 

after all, the reconciliation between the old General 



556 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. 

and Benton was merely external, and that they really 
hated one another as before. I do not think so. 

These dinners of the Mayors are rather agreeable 
than otherwise, except for the annoyance, in my case, 
of being called up to speak to a toast, and that is less 
disagreeable than at first. The suite of rooms at the 
Town House is stately and splendid, and all the May- 
ors, as far as I have seen, exercise hospitality in a 
manner worthy of the chief magistrates of a great city. 
They are supposed always to spend much more than 
their salary (which is X2,000) in these entertainments. 
The town provides the wines, I am told, and it might 
be expected that they should be particularly good, — 
at least, those which improve by age, for a quarter 
of a century should be only a moderate age for wine 
from the cellars of centuries-long institutions, like a 
corporate borough. Each Mayor might lay in a sup- 
ply of the best vintage he could find, and trust his 
good name to posterity to the credit of that wine; 
and so he would be kindly and warmly remembered 
long after his own nose had lost its rubicundity. In 
point of fact, the wines seem to be good, but not re- 
markable. The dinner was good, and very handsomely 
served, with attendance enough, both in the hall be- 
low — where the door was wide open at the appointed 
hour, notwithstanding the cold — and at table ; some 
being in the rich livery of the borough, and some in 
plain clothes. Servants, too, were stationed at various 
points from the hall to the reception-room ; and the 
last one shouted forth the name of the entering guest. 
There were, I should think, about fifty guests at this 
dinner. . . . Two bishops were present. The Bish- 
ops of Chester and New South Wales, dressed in a 
kind of long tunics, with black breeches and silk 



1855.] LIVERPOOL. 557 

stockings, insomuch that I first fancied they were 
Catholics. Also Dr. McNeil, in a stiff-collared coat, 
looking more like a general than a divine. There 
were two officers in blue uniforms ; and all the rest 
of us were in black, with only two white waistcoats, 
— my own being one, — and a rare sprinkling of 
white cravats. How hideously a man looks in them ! 
I should like to have seen such assemblages as must 
have gathered in that reception-room, and walked 
with stately tread to the dining-hall, in times past, — 
the Mayor and other civic dignities in their robes, 
noblemen in their state dresses, the Consul in his olive- 
leaf embroidery, everybody in some sort of bedizen- 
ment, — and then the dinner would have been a mag- 
nificent spectacle, worthy of the gilded hall, the rich 
table-service, and the powdered and gold-laced servi- 
tors. At a former dinner I remember seeing a gentle- 
man in small-clothes, with a dress-sword ; but all for- 
malities of the kind are passing away. The Mayor's 
dinners, too, will no doubt be extinct before many 
years go by. I drove home from the Woodside Ferry 
in a cab with Bishop Burke and two other gentlemen. 
The Bishop is nearly seven feet high. 

After writing the foregoing account of a civic ban- 
quet, where I ate turtle-soup, salmon, woodcock, oys- 
ter patties, and I know not what else, I have been to 
the News - Room and found the Exchange pavement 
densely thronged with people of all ages and of all 
manner of dirt and rags. They were waiting for soup- 
tickets, and waiting very patiently too, without outcry 
or disturbance, or even sour looks, — only patience 
and meekness in their faces. Well, I don't know that 
they have a right to be impatient of starvation ; but 
still there does seem to be an insolence of riches and 



558 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. 

prosperity, which one day or another will have a 
downfall. And this will be a pity, too. 

On Saturday I went with my friend Mr. Bright to 
Otterpool and to Larkhill to see the skaters on the 
private waters of those two seats of gentlemen ; and 
it is a wonder to behold — and it is always a new 
wonder to me — how comfortable Englishmen know 
how to make themselves ; locating their dwellings far 
within private grounds, with secure gateways and por- 
ters' lodges, and the smoothest roads, and trimmest 
paths, and shaven lawns, and clumps of trees, and 
every bit of the ground, every hill and dell, made the 
most of for convenience and beauty, and so well kept 
that even winter cannot cause disarray ; and all this 
appropriated to the same family for generations, so 
that I suppose they come to believe it created exclu- 
sively and on purpose for them. And, really, the re- 
sult is good and beautiful. It is a home, — an insti- 
tution which we Americans have not ; but then I 
doubt whether anybody is entitled to a home in this 
world, in so fulJ a sense. 

The day was very cold, and the skaters seemed to 
enjoy themselves exceedingly. They were, I suppose, 
friends of the owners of the grounds, and Mr. Bright 
said they were treated in a jolly way, with hot lunch- 
eons. The skaters practise skating more as an art, 
and can perform finer manoeuvres on the ice, than our 
New England skaters usually can, though the English 
have so much less opportunity for practice. A beg- 
gar-woman was haunting the grounds at Otterpool, 
but I saw nobody give her anything. I wonder how 
she got inside of the gate. 

Mr. W. J spoke of General Jackson as having 



1855.] LIVERPOOL. 559 

come from the same part of Ireland as himself, and 
perhaps of the same family. I wonder whether he 
meant to say that the General was born in Ireland, 
— that having been suspected in America. 

February 21st — Yesterday two companies of work- 
people came to our house in Rock Park, asking as- 
sistance, being out of work and with no resource other 
than charity. There were a dozen or more in each 
party. Their deportment was quiet and altogether un- 
exceptionable, — no rudeness, no gruff ness, nothing of 
menace. Indeed, such demonstrations would not have 
been safe, as they were followed about by two police- 
men ; but they really seem to take their distress as 
their own misfortune and God's will, and impute it to 
nobody as a fault. This meekness is very touching, 
and makes one question the more whether they have 
all their rights. There have been disturbances, within 
a day or two, in Liverpool, and shops have been 
broken open and robbed of bread and money ; but 
this is said to have been done by idle vagabonds, and 
not by the really hungry work-people. These last 
submit to starvation gently and patiently, as if it were 
an every-day matter with them, or, at least, nothing 
but what lay fairly within their horoscope. I suppose, 
in fact, their stomachs have the physical habit that 
makes hunger not intolerable, because customary. If 
they had been used to a full meat diet, their hunger 
would be fierce, like that of ravenous beasts ; but now 
they are trained to it. 

I think that the feeling of an American, divided, as 
L am, by the ocean from his country, has a continual 
and immediate correspondence with the national feel- 



560 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. 

ing at home ; and it seems to be independent of any 
external communication. Thus, my ideas about tha 
Russian war vary in accordance with the state of the 
public mind at home, so that I am conscious where- 
abouts public sympathy is. 

March 1th. — J and I walked to Tranmere, 

and passed an old house which I suppose to be Tran- 
mere Hall. Our way to it was up a hollow lane, with 
a bank and hedge on each side, and with a few thatched 
stone cottages, centuries old, their ridge-poles crooked 
and the stones time-worn, scattered along. At one 
point there was a wide, deep well, hewn out of the 
solid red freestone, and with steps, also hewn in solid 
rock, leading down to it. These steps were much hol- 
lowed by the feet of those who had come to the well ; 
and' they reach beneath the water, which is very high. 
The well probably supplied water to the old cotters and 
retainers of Tranmere Hall five hundred years ago. 
The Hall stands on the verge of a long hill which 
stretches behind Tranmere and as far as Birkenhead. 

It is an old gray stone edifice, with a good many 
gables, and windows with mullions, and some of them 
extending the whole breadth of the gable. In some 
parts of the house, the windows seem to have been 
built up ; probably in the days when daylight was 
taxed. The form of the Hall is multiplex, the roofs 
sloping down and intersecting one another, so as to 
make the general result indescribable. There were 
two sundials on different sides of the house, both the 
dial-plates of which were of stone ; and on one the fig- 
ures, so far as I could see, were quite worn off, but the 
gnomon still cast a shadow over it in such a way that 
I could judge that it was about noon. The other dial 



1855.] LIVERPOOL. 561 

had some half-worn hour-marks, but no gnomon. The 
chinks of the stones of the house were very weedy, and 
the building looked quaint and venerable ; but it is 
now converted into a farm-house, with the farm-yard 
and outbuildings closely appended. A village, too, 
has grown up about it, so that it seems out of place 
among modern stuccoed dwellings, such as are erected 
for tradesmen and other moderate people who have 
their residences in the neighborhood of a great city. 
Among these there are a few thatched cottages, the 
homeliest domiciles that ever mortals lived in, belong- 
ing to the old estate. Directly across the street is a 
Wayside Inn, " licensed to sell wine, spirits, ale, and 
tobacco." The street itself has been laid out since 
the land grew valuable by the increase of Liverpool 
and Birkenhead ; for the old Hall would never have 
been built on the verge of a public way. 

March 21th. — I attended court to - day, at St. 
George's Hall, with my wife, Mr. Bright, and Mr. 
Channing, sitting in the High Sheriff's seat. It was 
the civil side, and Mr. Justice Cresswell presided. The 
lawyers, as far as aspect goes, seemed to me inferior 
to an American bar, judging from their countenances, 
whether as intellectual men or gentlemen. Their wigs 
and gowns do not impose on the spectator, though they 
strike him as an imposition. Their date is past. Mr. 
Warren, of the " Ten Thousand a Year," was in 
court, — a pale, thin, intelligent face, evidently a ner- 
vous man, more unquiet than anybody else in court, — 
always restless in his seat, whispering to his neighbors, 
settling his wig, perhaps with an idea that people sin- 
gle him out. St. George's Hall — the interior hall it- 
self, I mean — is a spacious, lofty, and most rich and 

vol. vii. 36 



562 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. 

noble apartment, and very satisfactory. The pave- 
ment is made of mosaic tiles, and has a beautiful 
effect. 

April Itho — I dined at Mr. J. P. Heywood's on 
Thursday, and met there Mr. and Mrs. of Smith- 
ell's Hall. The Hall is an old edifice of some five 

hundred years, and Mrs. says there is a bloody 

footstep at the foot of the great staircase. The tradi- 
tion is that a certain martyr, in Bloody Mary's time, 
being examined before the occupant of the Hall, and 
committed to prison, stamped his foot, in earnest pro- 
test against the injustice with which he was treated. 
Blood issued from his foot, which slid along the stone 
pavement, leaving a long footmark, printed in blood. 
And there it has remained ever since, in spite of the 

scrubbings of all succeeding generations. Mrs. 

spoke of it with much solemnity, real or affected. She 
says that they now cover the bloody impress with a 
carpet, being unable to remove it. In the History of 
Lancashire, which I looked at last night, there is quite 
a different account, — according to which the foot- 
step is not a bloody one, but is a slight cavity or ine- 
quality in the surface of the stone, somewhat in the 
shape of a man's foot with a peaked shoe. The mar- 
tyr's name was George Marsh. He was a curate, and 

was afterwards burnt. Mrs. asked me to go and 

see the Hall and the footmark ; and as it is in Lanca- 
shire, and not a great way off, and a curious old place, 
perhaps I may. 

April 12th. — The Earl of , whom I saw the 

other day at St. George's Hall, has a somewhat elderly 
look, — a pale and rather thin face, which strikes one 



1855.] LIVERPOOL. 563 

as remarkably short, or compressed from top to bot- 
tom. Nevertheless, it has great intelligence, and sen- 
sitiveness too, I should think, but a cold, disagreeable 
expression. I should take him to be a man of not 
very pleasant temper, — not genial. He has no phys- 
ical presence nor dignity, yet one sees him to be a per- 
son of rank and consequence. But, after all, there is 
nothing about him which it need have taken centu- 
ries of illustrious nobility to produce, especially in a 

man of remarkable ability, as Lord certainly is. 

S , who attended court all through the Hapgood 

trial, and saw Lord for hours together every day, 

has come to conclusions quite different from mine. 
She thinks him a perfectly natural person, without 
any assumption, any self-consciousness, any scorn of 
the lower world. She was delighted with his ready 
appreciation and feeling of what was passing around 
him, — his quick enjoyment of a joke, — the simplicity 
and unaffectedness of his emotion at whatever inci- 
dents excited his interest, — the genial acknowledg- 
ment of sympathy, causing him to look round and ex- 
change glances with those near him, who were not his 
individual friends, but barristers and other casual per- 
sons. He seemed to her all that a nobleman ought to 
be, entirely simple and free from pretence and self-as- 
sertion, which persons of lower rank can hardly help 
bedevilling themselves with. I saw him only a very 
few moments, so cannot put my observation against 
hers, especially as I was influenced by what I had 
heard the Liverpool people say of him. 

I do not know whether I have mentioned that the 
handsomest man I have seen in England was a young 
footman of Mr. Heywood's. In his rich livery, he 
was a perfect Joseph Andrews. 



564 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. 

In my Romance, the original emigrant to America 
may have carried away with him a family secret, 
whereby it was in his power, had he so chosen, to have 
brought about the ruin of the family. This secret he 
transmits to his American progeny, by whom it is in- 
herited throughout all the intervening generations. 
At last, the hero of the Romance comes to England, 
and finds, that, by means of this secret, he still has 
it in his power to procure the downfall of the family. 
It would be something similar to the story of Mele- 
ager, whose fate depended on the firebrand that his 
mother had snatched from the flames. 

April 24:th. — On Saturday I was present at a de- 
jeuner on board the Donald McKay; the principal 
guest being Mr. Layard, M. P. There were several 
hundred people, quite filling the between decks of the 
ship, which was converted into a saloon for the occa- 
sion. I sat next to Mr. Layard, at the head of the 
table, and so had a good opportunity of seeing and 
getting acquainted with him. He is a man in early 
middle age, — of middle stature, with an open, frank, 
intelligent, kindly face. His forehead is not expan- 
sive, but is prominent in the perceptive regions, and 
retreats a good deal. His mouth is full, — I liked 
him from the first. He was very kind and compli- 
mentary to me, and made me promise to go and see 
him in London. 

It would have been a very pleasant entertainment, 
only that my pleasure in it was much marred by hav- 
ing to acknowledge a toast in honor of the President. 
However, such things do not trouble me nearly so 
much as they used to do, and I came through it toler- 
ably enough. Mr. Layard' s speech was the great a£ 



1855] LIVERPOOL. 565 

fair of the day. He speaks with much fluency (though 
he assured me that he had to put great force upon 
himself to speak publicly), and, as he warms up, seems 
to engage with his whole moral and physical man, — 
quite possessed with what he has to say. His evident 
earnestness and good faith make him eloquent, and 
stand him instead of oratorical graces. His views of 
the position of England and the prospects of the war 
were as dark as well could be ; and his speech was ex- 
ceedingly to the purpose, full of common - sense, and 
with not one word of clap-trap. Judging from its effect 
upon the audience, he spoke the voice of the whole 
English people, — although an English Baronet, who 
sat next below me, seemed to dissent, or at least to 
think that it was not exactly the thing for a stranger 
to hear. It concluded amidst great cheering. Mr. 
Layard appears to be a true Englishman, with a moral 
force and strength of character, and earnestness of 
purpose, and fulness of common-sense, such as have 
always served England's turn in her past successes ; 
but rather fit for resistance than progress. No doubt, 
he is a good and very able man ; but I question 
whether he could get England out of the difficulties 
which he sees so clearly, or could do much better than 
Lord Palmerston, whom he so decries. 



April 25th. — Taking the deposition of sailors yes- 
terday, in a case of alleged ill-usage by the officers of 
a vessel, one of the witnesses was an old seaman of 
sixty. In reply to some testimony of his, the captain 
said, " You were the oldest man in the ship, and we 
honored you as such." The mate also said that he 
never could have thought of striking an old man like 



566 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. 

that. Indeed, the poor old fellow had a kind of dig- 
nity and venerableness about him, though he confessed 
to having been drunk, and seems to have been a mis- 
chief-maker, — what they call a sea-preacher, — pro- 
moting discontent and grumbling. He must have 
been a very handsome man in his youth, having regu- 
lar features of a noble and beautiful cast. His beard 
was gray ; but his dark hair had hardly a streak of 
white, and was abundant all over his head. He was 
deaf, and seemed to sit in a kind of seclusion, unless 
when loudly questioned or appealed to. Once he 
broke forth from a deep silence thus, " I defy any 
man ! " and then was silent again. It had a strange 
effect, this general defiance, which he meant, I sup- 
pose, in answer to some accusation that he thought 
was made against him. His general behavior through- 
out the examination was very decorous and proper ; 
and he said he had never but once hitherto been be- 
fore a consul, and that was in 1819, when a mate had 
ill-used him, and, " being a young man then, I gave 
him a beating," — whereupon his face gleamed with a 
quiet smile, like faint sunshine on an old ruin. " By 
many a tempest has his beard been shook " ; and I 
suppose he must soon go into a workhouse, and 
thence, shortly, to his grave. He is now in a hospital, 
having, as the surgeon certifies, some ribs fractured ; 
but there does not appear to have been any violence 
used upon him aboard the ship of such a nature as to 
cause this injury, though he swears it was a blow from 
a rope, and nothing else. What struck me in the case 
was the respect and rank that his age seemed to give 
him, in the view of the officers ; and how, as the cap- 
tain's expression signified, it lifted him out of his low 
position, and made him a person to be honored. The 



1855.] LIVERPOOL. 567 

dignity of his manner is perhaps partly owing to the 
ancient mariner, with his long experience, being an 
oracle among the forecastle men. 

May 3<i. — It rains to-day, after a very long period 
of east-wind and dry weather. The east-wind here, 
blowing across the island, seems to be the least damp 
of all the winds ; but it is full of malice and mischief, 
of an indescribably evil temper, and stabs one like a 
cold, poisoned dagger. I never spent so disagreeable 
a spring as this, although almost every day for a 
month has been bright. 

Friday, May Wth. — A few weeks ago, a sailor, a 
most pitiable object, came to my office to complain of 
cruelty from his captain and mate. They had beaten 
him shamefully, of which he bore grievous marks 
about his face and eyes, and bruises on his head and 
other parts of his person ; and finally the ship had 
sailed, leaving him behind. I never in my life saw so 
forlorn a fellow, so ragged, so wretched ; and even his 
wits seemed to have been beaten out of him, if per- 
chance he ever had any. He got an order for the hos- 
pital ; and there he has been, off and on, ever since, 
till yesterday, when I received a message that he was 
dying, and wished to see the Consul ; so I went with 
Mr. Wilding to the hospital. We were ushered into 
the waiting-room, — a kind of parlor, with a fire in 
the grate, and a centre-table, whereon lay one or two 
medical journals, with wood engravings; and there 
was a young man, who seemed to be an official of the 
house, reading. Shortly the surgeon appeared, — a 
brisk, cheerful, kindly sort of person, whom I have 
met there on previous visits. He told us that the man 



568 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. 

was dying, and probably would not be able to commu- 
nicate anything, but, nevertheless, ushered us up to 
the highest floor, and into the room where he lay. It 
was a large, oblong room, with ten or twelve beds in 
it, each occupied by a patient. The surgeon said that 
the hospital was often so crowded that they were com- 
pelled to lay some of the patients on the floor. The 
man whom we came to see lay on his bed in a little 
recess formed by a projecting window ; so that there 
was a kind of seclusion for him to die in. He seemed 
quite insensible to outward things, and took no notice 
of our approach, nor responded to what was said to 
him, — lying on his side, breathing with short gasps ; 
his apparent disease being inflammation of the chest, 
although the surgeon said that he might be found to 
have sustained internal injury by bruises. He was 
restless, tossing his head continually, mostly with his 
eyes shut, and much compressed and screwed up, but 
sometimes opening them ; and then they looked 
brighter and darker than when I first saw them. I 
think his face was not at any time so stupid as at his 
first interview with me ; but whatever intelligence he 
had was rather inward than outward, as if there might 
be life and consciousness at a depth within, while as 
to external matters he was in a mist. The surgeon 
felt his wrist, and said that there was absolutely no 
pulsation, and that he might die at any moment, or 
might perhaps live an hour, but that there was no 
prospect of his being able to communicate with me. 
He was quite restless, nevertheless, and sometimes 
half raised himself in bed, sometimes turned himself 
quite over, and then lay gasping for an instant. His 
woollen shirt being thrust up on his arm, there ap- 
peared a tattooing of a ship and anchor, and other 



1855.] LIVERPOOL. 569 

nautical emblems, on both of them, which another 
sailor - patient, on examining them, said must have 
been done years ago. This might be of some impor- 
tance, because the dying man had told me, when I 
first saw him, that he was no sailor, but a farmer, and 
that, this being his first voyage, he had been beaten 
by the captain for not doing a sailor's duty, which he 
had had no opportunity of learning. These sea-em- 
blems indicated that he was probably a seaman of 
some years' service. 

While we stood in the little recess, such of the other 
patients as were convalescent gathered near the foot of 
the bed ; and the nurse came and looked on, and hov- 
ered about us, — a sharp-eyed, intelligent woman of 
middle age, with a careful and kind expression, neg- 
lecting nothing that was for the patient's good, yet 
taking his death as coolly as any other incident in her 
daily business. Certainly, it was a very forlorn death- 
bed ; and I felt — what I have heretofore been inclined 
to doubt — that it might be a comfort to have persons 
whom one loves, to go with us to the threshold of the 
other world, and leave us only when we are fairly 
across it. This poor fellow had a wife and two chil- 
dren on the other side of the water. 

At first he did not utter any sound ; but by and by 
he moaned a little, and gave tokens of being more 
sensible to outward concerns, — not quite so misty 
and dreamy as hitherto. We had been talking all the 
while — myself in a whisper, but the surgeon in his 
ordinary tones — about his state, without his paying 
any attention. But now the surgeon put his mouth 
down to the man's face and said, " Do you know that 
you are dying ? " At this the patient's head began to 
move upon the pillow ; and I thought at first that it 



570 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. 

was only the restlessness that he had shown all along ; 
but soon it appeared to be an expression of emphatic 
dissent, a negative shake of the head. He shook it 
with all his might, and groaned and mumbled, so that 
it was very evident how miserably reluctant he was to 
die. Soon after this he absolutely spoke. " Oh, I want 
you to get me well ! I want to get away from here ! " 
in a groaning and moaning utterance. The surgeon's 
question had revived him, but to no purpose ; for, being 
told that the Consul had come to see him, and asked 
whether he had anything to communicate, he said 
only, " Oh, I want him to get me well ! " and the whole 
life that was left in him seemed to be unwillingness to 
die. This did not last long ; for he soon relapsed into 
his first state, only with his face a little more pinched 
and screwed up, and his eyes strangely sunken and lost 
in his head ; and the surgeon said that there would 
be no use in my remaining. So I took my leave. 
Mr. Wilding had brought a deposition of the man's 
evidence, which he had clearly made at the Consulate, 
for him to sign, and this we left with the surgeon, in 
case there should be such an interval of consciousness 
and intelligence before death as to make it possible for 
him to sign it. But of this there is no probability. 

I have just received a note from the hospital, stat- 
ing that the sailor, Daniel Smith, died about three 
quarters of an hour after I saw him. 

May 18^A. — The above-mentioned Daniel Smith 
had about him a bundle of letters, which I have ex- 
amined. They are all very yellow, stained with sea- 
water, smelling of bad tobacco-smoke, and much worn 
at the folds. Never were such ill-written letters, nor 



1855.] LIVERPOOL. 571 

such incredibly fantastic spelling. They seem to be 
from various members of his family, — most of them 
from a brother, who purports to have been a deck- 
hand in the coasting and steamboat trade between 
Charleston and other ports ; others from female rela- 
tions ; one from his father, in which he inquires how 
long his son has been in jail, and when the trial is to 
come on, — the offence, however, of which he was ac 
cused not being indicated. But from the tenor of kis 
brother's letters, it would appear that he was a small 
farmer in the interior of South Carolina, sending but- 
ter, eggs, and poultry to be sold in Charleston by his 
brother, and receiving the returns in articles pur- 
chased there. This was his own account of himself ; 
and he affirmed, in his deposition before me, that he 
had never had any purpose of shipping for Liverpool, 
or anywhere else ; but that, going on board the ship 
to bring a man's trunk ashore, he was compelled to re- 
main and serve as a sailor. This was a hard fate, cer- 
tainly, and a strange thing to happen in the United 
States at this day, — that a free citizen should be 
absolutely kidnapped, carried to a foreign country, 
treated with savage cruelty during the voyage, and 
left to die on his arrival. Yet all this has unquestion- 
ably been done, and will probably go unpunished. 

The seed of the long-stapled cotton, now cultivated 
in America, was sent there in 1786 from the Bahama 
Islands, by some of the royalist refugees, who had set- 
tled there. The inferior short-stapled cotton had been 
previously cultivated for domestic purposes. The seeds 
of every other variety have been tried without success. 
The kind now grown was first introduced into Georgia. 
Thus to the refugees America owes as much of her 
prosperity as is due to the cotton-crops, and much of 
whatever harm is to result from slavery. 



572 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. 

May 22d. — Captain J says that he saw, in his 

late voyage to Australia and India, a vessel commanded 
by an Englishman, who had with him his wife and thir- 
teen children. This ship was the home of the family, 
and they had no other. The thirteen children had 
all been born on board, and had been brought up on 
board, and knew nothing of dry land, except by occa- 
sionally setting foot on it. 

Captain J is a very agreeable specimen of the 

American shipmaster, — a pleasant, gentlemanly man, 
not at all refined, and yet with fine and honorable 
sensibilities. Very easy in his manners and conversa- 
tion, yet gentle, — talking on freely, and not much 
minding grammar; but finding a sufficient and pic- 
turesque expression for what he wishes to say ; very 
cheerful and vivacious ; accessible to feeling, as yes- 
terday, when talking about the recent death of his 
mother. His voice faltered, and the tears came into 
his eyes, though before and afterwards he smiled mer- 
rily, and made us smile ; fond of his wife, and carry- 
ing her about the world with him, and blending her 
with all his enjoyments; an excellent and sagacious 
man of business ; liberal in his expenditure ; proud of 
his ship and flag ; always well dressed, with some lit- 
tle touch of sailor-like flashiness, but not a whit too 
much : slender in figure, with a handsome face, and 
rather profuse brown beard and whiskers ; active and 
alert; about thirty-two. A daguerreotype sketch of 
any conversation of his would do him no justice, for 
its slang, its grammatical mistakes, its mistaken words 
(as "portable" for "portly"), would represent a 
vulgar man, whereas the impression he leaves is by no 
means that of vulgarity ; but he is a character quite 
perfect within itself, fit for the deck and the cabin> 



1855.] LIVERPOOL. 573 

and agreeable in the drawing-room, though not amen- 
able altogether to its rules. Being so perfectly nat- 
ural, he is more of a gentleman for those little viola- 
tions of rule, which most men, with his opportunities, 
might escape. 

The men whose appeals to the Consul's charity are 
the hardest to be denied are those who have no coun- 
try, — Hungarians, Poles, Cubans, Spanish - Ameri- 
cans, and French republicans. All exiles for liberty 
come to me, as if the representative of America were 
their representative. Yesterday, came an old French 
soldier, and showed his wounds ; to-day, a Spaniard, 
a friend of Lopez, — bringing his little daughter with 
him. He said he was starving, and looked so. The 
little girl was in good condition enough, and decently 
dressed. — May 2M. 



May 30th. — The two past days have been Whit- 
suntide holidays ; and they have been celebrated at 
Tranmere in a manner very similar to that of the old 
" Election " in Massachusetts, as I remember it a good 
many years ago, though the festival has now almost or 
quite died out. Whitsuntide was kept up on our side 
of the water, I am convinced, under pretence of rejoic- 
ings at the election of Governor. It occurred at pre- 
cisely the same period of the year, — the same week ; 
the only difference being, that Monday and Tuesday 
are the Whitsun festival days, whereas, in Massachu- 
setts, Wednesday was " Election Day," and the acme 
of the merrymaking. 

I passed through Tranmere yesterday forenoon, and 
lingered awhile to see the sports. The greatest pecul- 



574 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. 

iarity of the crowd, to my eye, was that they seemed 
not to have any best clothes, and therefore had put on 
no holiday suits, — a grimy people, as at all times, 
heavy, obtuse, with thick beer in their blood. Coarse, 
rough-complexioned women and girls were intermin- 
gled, — the girls with no maiden trimness in their at- 
tire, large and blowsy. Nobody seemed to have been 
washed that day. All the enjoyment was of an ex 
ceedingly sombre character, so far as I saw it, though 
there was a richer variety of sports than at similar 
festivals in America. There were wooden horses, re- 
volving in circles, to be ridden a certain number of 
rounds for a penny ; also swinging cars gorgeously 
painted, and the newest named after Lord Raglan ; 
and four cars balancing one another, and turned by a 
winch ; and people with targets and rifles, — the prin- 
cipal aim being to hit an apple bobbing on a string 
before the target ; other guns for shooting at the dis- 
tance of a foot or two, for a prize of filberts ; and a 
game much in fashion, of throwing heavy sticks at 
earthen mugs suspended on lines, three throws for a 
penny. Also, there was a posture-master, showing his 
art in the centre of a ring of miscellaneous spectators, 
and handing round his hat after going through all his 
attitudes. The collection amounted to only one half- 
penny, and, to eke it out, I threw in three more. 
There were some large booths with tables placed the 
whole length, at which sat men and women drinking 
and smoking pipes ; orange-girls, a great many, sell- 
ing the worst possible oranges, which had evidently 
been boiled to give them a show of freshness. There 
were likewise two very large structures, the walls made 
of boards roughly patched together, and roofed with 
canvas, which seemed to have withstood a thousand 



1855.] LIVERPOOL. 575 

storms. Theatres were there, and in front there were 
pictures of scenes which were to be represented with- 
in; the price of admission being two -pence to one 
theatre, and a penny to the other. But, small as the 
price of tickets was, I could not see that anybody 
bought them. Behind the theatres, close to the board 
wall, and perhaps serving as the general dressing- 
room, was a large windowed wagon, in which I sup- 
pose the company travel and live together. Never, 
to my imagination, was the mysterious glory that has 
surrounded theatrical representation ever since my 
childhood brought down into such dingy reality as 
this. The tragedy queens were the same coarse and 
homely women and girls that surrounded me on the 
green. Some of the people had evidently been drink- 
ing more than was good for them ; but their drunken- 
ness was silent and stolid, with no madness in it. No 
ebullition of any sort was apparent. 

May Slst. — Last Sunday week, for the first time, I 
heard the note of the cuckoo. " Cuck-oo — cuck-oo" 
it says, repeating the word twice, not in a brilliant me- 
tallic tone, but low and flute-like, without the excessive 
sweetness of the flute, — without an excess of saccha- 
rine juice in the sound. There are said to be always 
two cuckoos seen together. The note is very soft and 
pleasant. The larks I have not yet heard in the sky ; 
though it is not infrequent to hear one singing in a 
cage, in the streets of Liverpool. 

Brewers' draymen are allowed to drink as much of 

.their master's beverage as they like, and they grow 

very brawny and corpulent, resembling their own 

horses in size, and presenting, one would suppose, 



576 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. 

perfect pictures of physical comfort and well-being. 
But the least bruise, or even the hurt of a ringer, is 
liable to turn to gangrene or erysipelas, and become 
fatal. 

When the wind blows violently, however clear the 
sky, the English say, "It is a stormy day." And, on 
the other hand, when the air is still, and it does not 
actually rain, however dark and lowering the sky may 
be, they say, " The weather is fine ! " 

June 2d. — The English women of the lower classes 
have a grace of their own, not seen in each individual, 
but nevertheless belonging to their order, which is not 
to be found in American women of the corresponding 
class. The other day, in the police court, a girl was 
put into the witness-box, whose native graces of this 
sort impressed me a good deal. She was coarse, and 
her dress was none of the cleanest, and nowise smart. 
She appeared to have been up all night, too, drinking 
at the Tranmere wake, and had since ridden in a cart, 
covered up with a rug. She described herself as a 
servant-girl, out of place; and her charm lay in all 
her manifestations, — her tones, her gestures, her look l 
her way of speaking and what she said, being so ap- 
propriate and natural in a girl of that class ; nothing 
affected ; no proper grace thrown away by attempting 
to appear lady-like, — which an American girl would 
have attempted, — and she would also have succeeded 
in a certain degree. If each class would but keep 
within itself, and show its respect for itself by aiming 
at nothing beyond, they would all be more respectable.. 
But this kind of fitness is evidently not to be expected 
in the future ; and something else must be substituted 
for it. 



1855.] LIVERPOOL, , 577 

These scenes at the police court are often well worth 
witnessing. The controlling genius of the court, ex- 
cept when the stipendiary magistrate presides, is the 
clerk, who is a man learned in the law. Nominally 
the cases are decided by the aldermen, who sit in rote 
tion, but at every important point there comes a nod 
or a whisper from the clerk ; and it is that whisper 
which sets the defendant free or sends nim to prison. 
Nevertheless, I suppose the alderman's common-sense 
and native shrewdness are not without their efficacy in 
producing a general tendency towards the right ; and, 
no doubt, the decisions of the police court are quite 
as often just as those of any other court whatever. 



June 11th. — I walked with J — — yesterday to 
Bebbington Church. When I first saw this church, 
nearly two years since, it seemed to me the fulfilment 
of my ideal of an old English country church. It is 
not so satisfactory now, although certainly a venerable 
edifice. There used some time ago to be ivy all over 
the tower ; and at my first view of it, there was still a 
little remaining on the upper parts of the spire. But 
the main roots, I believe, were destroyed, and pains 
were taken to clear away the whole of the ivy, so that 
now it is quite bare, — nothing but homely gray stone, 
with marks of age, but no beauty. The most curious 
thing about the church is the font. It is a massive 
pile, composed of five or six layers of freestone in an 
octagon shape, placed in the angle formed by the pro- 
jecting side porch and the wall of the church, and 
standing under a stained-glass window. The base is 
six or seven feet across, and it is built solidly up in 
successive steps, to the height of about six feet, — an 

VOL. VII. 37 



578 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. 

octagonal pyramid, with the basin of the font crown- 
ing the pile hewn out of the solid stone, and about a 
foot in diameter and the same in depth. There was 
water in it from the recent rains, — water just from 
heaven, and therefore as holy as any water it ever held 
in old Romish times. The aspect of this aged font 
is extremely venerable, with moss in the basin and all 
over the stones; grass, and weeds of various kinds, 
and little shrubs, rooted in the chinks of the stones 
and between the successive steps. 

At each entrance of Rock Park, where we live, there 
is a small Gothic structure of stone, each inhabited by 
a policeman and his family ; very small dwellings in- 
deed, with the main apartment opening directly out-of- 
doors ; and when the door is open, one can see the 
household fire, the good wife at work, perhaps the 
table set, and a throng of children clustering round, 
and generally overflowing the threshold. The police- 
man walks about the Park in stately fashion, with his 
silver-laced blue uniform and snow-white gloves touch- 
ing his hat to gentlemen who reside in the Park. In 
his public capacity he has rather an awful aspect, but 
privately he is a humble man enough, glad of any lit- 
tle job, and of old clothes for his many children, or, I 
believe, for himself. One of the two policemen is a 
shoemaker and cobbler. His pay, officially, is some- 
where about a guinea a week. 

The Park, just now, is very agreeable to look at, 
shadowy with trees and shrubs, and with glimpses of 
green leaves and flower-gardens through the branches 
and twigs that line the iron fences. After p. shower 
the hawthorn blossoms are delightfully fi^rant. 
Golden tassels of the laburnum are abundant- 



1855.] LIVERPOOL. 579 

I may have mentioned elsewhere the traditional 
prophecy, that, when the ivy should reach the top of 
Bebbington spire, the tower was doomed to fall. It 
has still, therefore, a chance of standing for centuries. 
Mr. Turner tells me that the font now used is inside 
of the church, but the one outside is of unknown an- 
tiquity, and that it was customary, in papistical times, 
to have the font without the church. 

There is a little boy often on board the Rock Ferry 
steamer with an accordion, — an instrument I detest ; 
but nevertheless it becomes tolerable in his hands, not 
so much for its music, as for the earnestness and inter- 
est with which he plays it. His body and the accor- 
dion together become one musical instrument on which 
his soul plays tunes, for he sways and vibrates with 
the music from head to foot and throughout his frame, 
half closing his eyes and uplifting his face, as painters 
represent St. Cecilia and other famous musicians ; and 
sometimes he swings his accordion in the air, as if in 
a perfect rapture. After all, my ears, though not very 
nice, are somewhat tortured by his melodies, especially 
when confined within the cabin. The boy is ten years 
old, perhaps, and rather pretty ; clean, too, and neatly 
dressed, very unlike all other street and vagabond chil- 
dren whom I have seen in Liverpool. People give 
him their halfpence more readily than to any other 
musicians who infest the boat. 

J , the other day, was describing a soldier-crab 

to his mother, he being much interested in natural his- 
tory, and endeavoring to give as strong an idea as pos- 
sible of its warlike characteristics, and power to harm 
those who molest it. Little R sat by, quietly lis- 
tening and sewing, and at last, lifting her head, she 



580 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. 

remarked, " I hope God did not hurt hisself, when he 
was making him I " 

LEAMINGTON. 

June 21st — We left Rock Ferry and Liverpool 
on Monday, the 18th, by the rail for this place ; a 
very dim and rainy day, so that we had no pleasant 
prospects of the country ; neither would the scenery 
along the Great Western Railway have been in any 
case very striking, though sunshine would have made 
the abundant verdure and foliage warm and genial. 
But a railway naturally finds its way through all the 
common places of a country, and is certainly a most 
unsatisfactory mode of travelling, the only object be- 
ing to arrive. However, we had a whole carriage to 
ourselves, and the children enjoyed the earlier part of 
the journey very much* We skirted Shrewsbury, and 
I think I saw the old tower of a church near the sta- 
tion, perhaps the same that struck FalstafFs " long 
hour.'* As we left the town, I saw the Wrekin, a 
round, pointed hill of regular shape, and remembered 
the old toast, "To all friends round the Wrekin ! " 
As we approached Birmingham, the country began to 
look somewhat Brummagemish, with its manufacturing 
chimneys, and pennons of flame quivering out of their 
tops ; its forges, and great heaps of mineral refuse ; 
its smokiness, and other ugly symptoms. Of Birming- 
ham itself we saw little or nothing, except the mean 
and new brick lodging-houses, on the outskirts of the 
town. Passing through Warwick, we had a glimpse of 
the castle, — an ivied wall and two turrets, rising out 
of imbosoming foliage ; one's very idea of an old cas- 
tle. We reached Leamington at a little past six, and 
drove to the Clarendon Hotel, — a very spacious and 



1855.] LEAMINGTON. 581 

stately house, by far the most splendid hotel I have 
yet seen in England. The landlady, a courteous old 
lady in black, showed my wife our rooms, and we es- 
tablished ourselves in an immensely large and lofty 
parlor, with red curtains and ponderous furniture, per- 
haps a very little out of date. The waiter brought 
me the book of arrivals, containing the names of all 
visitors for from three to five years back. During two 
years I estimated that there had been about three hun- 
dred and fifty persons only, and while we were there, 
I saw nobody but ourselves to support the great hotel. 
Among the names were those of princes, earls, coun- 
tesses, and baronets ; and when the people of the 

house heard from R 's nurse that I too was a man 

of office, and held the title of Honorable in my own 
country, they greatly regretted that I entered myself 
as plain " Mister " in the book. We found this hotel 
very comfortable, and might doubtless have made it 
luxurious, had we chosen to go to five times the ex- 
pense of similar luxuries in America ; but we merely 
ordered comfortable things, and so came off at no 
very extravagant rate, — and with great honor, at all 
events, in the estimation of the waiter. 

During the afternoon we found lodgings, and estab- 
lished ourselves in them before dark. 

This English custom of lodgings, of which we had 
some experience at Rhyl last year, has its advantages ; 
but is rather uncomfortable for strangers, who, in first 
settling themselves down, find that they must under- 
take all the responsibility of housekeeping at an in- 
stant's warning, and cannot get even a cup of tea till 
they have made arrangements with the grocer. Soon, 
however, there comes a sense of being at home, and 



582 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. 

by our exclusive selves, which never can be attained 
at hotels nor boarding-houses. Our house is well sit- 
uated and respectably furnished, with the dinginess, 
however, which is inseparable from lodging-houses, — • 
as if others had used these things before and would 
use them again after we had gone, — a well-enough 
adaptation, but a lack of peculiar appropriateness ; 
and I think one puts off real enjoyment from a sense 
of not being truly fitted. 



July 1st. — On Friday I took the rail with J 

for Coventry. It was a bright and very warm day, 
oppressively so, indeed ; though I think that there is 
never in this English climate the pervading warmth 
of an American summer day. The sunshine may be 
excessively hot, but an overshadowing cloud, or the 
shade of a tree or of a building, at once affords relief ; 
and if the slightest breeze stirs, you feel the latent 
freshness of the air. 

Coventry is some nine or ten miles from Leaming- 
ton. The approach to it from the railway presents 
nothing very striking, — a few church-towers, and one 
or two tall steeples ; and the houses first seen are of 
modern and unnoticeable aspect. Getting into the in- 
terior of the town, however, you find the streets very 
crooked, and some of them very narrow. I saw one 
place where it seemed possible to shake hands from 
one jutting storied old house to another. There were 
whole streets of the same kind of houses, one story im- 
pending over another, such as used to be familiar to 
me in Salem, and in some streets of Boston. In fact, 
the whole aspect of the town — its irregularity and 
continual indirectness — reminded me very much of 



1855] COVENTRY. 583 

Boston, as I used to see it, in rare visits thither, when 
a child. 

These Coventry houses, however, many of them, are 
much larger than any of similar style that I have seen 
elsewhere, and they spread into greater bulk as the} r 
ascend, by means of one story jutting over the other. 
Probably the New-Englanders continued to follow this 
fashion of architecture after it had been abandoned in 
the mother country. The old house built by Philip 
English, in Salem, dated about 1692 ; and it was in 
this style, — many-gabled, and impending. Here the 
edifices of such architecture seem to be Elizabethan, 
and of earlier date. A woman in Stratford told us 
that the rooms, very low on the ground-floor, grew lof- 
tier from story to story to the attic. The fashion of 
windows, in Coventry, is such as I have not hitherto 
seen. In the highest story, a window of the ordinary 
height extends along the whole breadth of the house, 
ten, fifteen, perhaps twenty feet, just like any other 
window of a commonplace house, except for this inor- 
dinate width. One does not easily see what the inhab- 
itants want of so much window-light ; but the fashion 
is very general, and in modern houses, or houses that 
have been modernized, this style of window is retained. 
Thus young people who grow up amidst old people 
contract quaint and old-fashioned manners and aspect. 

I imagine that these ancient towns — such as Ches- 
ter and Stratford, Warwick and Coventry — contain 
even a great deal more antiquity than meets the eye. 
You see many modern fronts ; but if you peep or pen- 
etrate inside, you find an antique arrangement, — old 
rafters, intricate passages, and ancient staircases, which 
have put on merely a new outside, and are likely still 
to prove good for the usual date of a new house. 



584 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. 

They put such an immense and stalwart ponderosity 
into their frameworks, that I suppose a house of Eliz- 
abeth's time, if renewed, has at least an equal chance 
of durability with one that is new in every part. All 
the hotels in Coventry, so far as I noticed them, are 
old, with new fronts ; and they have an archway for 
the admission of vehicles into the court - yard, and 
doors opening into the rooms of the building on each 
side of the arch. Maids and waiters are seen darting 
across the arched passage from door to door, and it re- 
quires a guide (in my case, at least) to show you the 
way to the coffee-room or the bar. I have never been 
up stairs in any of them, but can conceive of infinite 
bewilderment of zigzag corridors between staircase and 
chamber. 

It was fair-day in Coventry, and this gave what no 
doubt is an unusual bustle to the streets. In fact, I 
have not seen such crowded and busy streets in any 
English town ; various kinds of merchandise being for 
sale in the open air, and auctioneers disposing of mis- 
cellaneous wares, pretty much as they do at musters 
and other gatherings in the United States. The ora- 
tory of the American auctioneer, however, greatly sur- 
passes that of the Englishman in vivacity and fun. 
But this movement and throng, together with the white 
glow of the sun on the pavements, make the scene, in 
my recollection, assume an American aspect, and this is 
strange in so antique and quaint a town as Coventry. 

We rambled about without any definite aim, but 
found our way, I believe, to most of the objects that 
are worth seeing. St. Michael's Church was most 
magnificent, — so old, yet enduring ; so huge, so rich j 
with such intricate minuteness in its finish, that, look 
as long as you will at it, you can always discover 



1855.] COVENTRY. 585 

something new directly before your eyes. I admire 
this in Gothic architecture, — that you cannot mas- 
ter it all at once, that it is not a naked outline ; 
but, as deep and rich as human nature itself, always 
revealing new ideas. It is as if the builder had built 
himself and his age up into it, and as if the edifice 
had life. Grecian temples are less interesting to me^ 
being so cold and crystalline. I think this is the only 
church I have seen where there are any statues still 
left standing in the niches of the exterior walls. We 
did not go inside. The steeple of St. Michael's is 
three hundred and three feet high, and no doubt the 
clouds often envelop the tip of the spire. Trinity, 
another church with a tall spire, stands near St. Mi- 
chael's, but did not attract me so much; though I, 
perhaps, might have admired it equally, had I seen it 
first or alone. We certainly know nothing of church- 
building in America, and of all English things that I 
have seen, methinks the churches disappoint me least. 
I feel, too, that there is something much more wonder- 
ful in them than I have yet had time to know and ex- 
perience. 

In the course of the forenoon, searching about 
everywhere in quest of Gothic architecture, we found 
our way into St. Mary's Hall. The doors were wide 
open ; it seemed to be public, — there was a notice on 
the wall desiring visitors to give nothing to attendants 
for showing it, and so we walked in. I observed, in 
the guide-books, that we should bave obtained an order 
for admission from some member of the town council ; 
but we had none, and found no need of it. An old 
woman, and afterwards an old man, both of whom 
seemed to be at home on the premises, told us that 
we might enter, and troubled neither themselves nor 
us any further. 



586 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. 

St. Mary's Hall is now the property of the Corpora- 
tion of Coventry, and seems to be the place where the 
Mayor and Council hold their meetings. It was built 
by one of the old guilds or fraternities of merchants 
and tradesmen. . . . The woman shut the kitchen 
door when I approached, so that I did not see the 
great fireplaces and huge cooking-utensils which are 
said to be there. Whether these are ever used nowa- 
days, and whether the Mayor of Coventry gives such 
hospitable banquets as the Mayor of Liverpool, I do 
not know. 

We went to the Red Lion, and had a luncheon of 
cold lamb and cold pigeon-pie. This is the best way 
of dining at English hotels, — to call the meal a 
luncheon, in which case you will get as good or bet- 
ter a variety than if it were a dinner, and at less than 
half the cost. Having lunched, we again wandered 
about town, and entered a quadrangle of gabled 
houses, with a church, and its churchyard on one side. 
This proved to be St. John's Church, and a part of 
the houses were the locality of Bond's Hospital, for 
the reception of ten poor men, and the remainder was 
devoted to the Bablake School. Into this latter I 
peered, with a real American intrusiveness, which I 
never found in myself before, but which I must now 
assume, or miss a great many things which I am anx- 
ious to see. Running along the front of the house, 
under the jut of the impending story, there was a 
cloistered walk, with windows opening on the quad- 
rangle. An arched oaken door, with long iron hinges s 
admitted us into a school -room about twenty feet 
square, paved with brick tiles, blue and red. Adjoin- 
ing this there is a larger school-room which we did not 



1855.] COVENTRY. 587 

enter, but peeped at, through one of the inner win- 
dows, from the cloistered walk. In the room which 
we entered, there were seven scholars' desks, and an 
immense arched fireplace, with seats on each side, 
under the chimney, on a stone slab resting on a brick 
pedestal. The opening of the fireplace was at least 
twelve feet in width. On one side of the room were 
pegs for fifty-two boys' hats and clothes, and there 
was a boy's coat, of peculiar cut, hanging on a peg, 
with the number " 50 " in brass upon it. The coat 
looked ragged and shabby. An old school-book was 
lying on one of the desks, much tattered, and without 
a title ; but it seemed to treat wholly of Saints' days 
and festivals of the Church. A flight of stairs, with 
a heavy balustrade of carved oak, ascended to a gal- 
lery, about eight or nine feet from the lower floor, 
which runs along two sides of the room, looking down 
upon it. The room is without a ceiling, and rises into 
a peaked gable, about twenty feet high. There is a 
large clock in it, and it is lighted by two windows, 
each about ten feet wide, — one in the gallery, and 
the other beneath it. Two benches or settles, with 
backs, stood one on each side of the fireplace. An 
old woman in black passed through the room while I 
was making my observations, and looked at me, but 
said nothing. The school was founded in 1563, by 
Thomas Whealby, Mayor of Coventry ; the revenue 
is about <£900, and admits children of the working- 
classes at eleven years old, clothes and provides for 
them, and finally apprentices them for seven years. 
We saw some of the boys playing in the quadrangle, 
dressed in long blue coats or gowns, with cloth caps 
on their heads. I know not how the atmosphere of 
antiquity, and massive continuance from age to age ? 



588 ENGLISH NOTE-BOOKS. [1855. 

which was the charm to me in this scene of a charity- 
school-room, can be thrown over it in description. 
After noting down these matters, I looked into the 
quiet precincts of Bond's Hospital, which, no doubt, 
was more than equally interesting ; but the old men 
were lounging about or lolling at length, looking very 
drowsy, and I had not the heart nor the face to in- 
trude among them. There is something altogether 
strange to an American in these charitable institu- 
tions, — in the preservation of antique modes and 
customs which is effected by them, insomuch that, 
doubtless, without at all intending it, the founders 
have succeeded in preserving a model of their own 
long-past age down into the midst of ours, and how 
much later nobody can know. 

We were now rather tired, and went to the railroad, 
intending to go home ; but we got into the wrong 
train, and were carried by express, with hurricane 
speed, to Bradon, where we alighted, and waited a 
good while for the return train to Coventry. At 
Coventry again we had more than an hour to wait, 
and therefore wandered wearily up into the city, and 
took another look at its bustling streets, in which 
there seems to be a good emblem of what England 
itself really is, — with a great deal of antiquity in it, 
and which is now chiefly a modification of the old. 
The new things are based and supported on the sturdy 
old things, and often limited and impeded by them ; 
but this antiquity is so massive that there seems to be 
no means of getting rid of it without tearing society 
to pieces. 

July 2d, — To-day I shall set out on my return to 
Liverpool, leaving my family here* 



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